Ep 113 – Black Health Matters: Improving Population Health Equity within African American Communities, with Dr. Richard W. Walker

28/06/2022 1h 4min
Ep 113 – Black Health Matters:  Improving Population Health Equity within African American Communities, with Dr. Richard W. Walker

Listen "Ep 113 – Black Health Matters: Improving Population Health Equity within African American Communities, with Dr. Richard W. Walker"

Episode Synopsis

It’s no secret that the Black community tops the list of groups afflicted by hypertension, stroke, diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and cancer. What the statistics do not show is the pain, misery, and despair that these conditions create—not only for the individual, but also for family and friends. As an African-American doctor, Dr. Richard Walker has studied these conditions among his patients for many years. Now, in his new book, “Black Health Matters”, Dr. Walker offers a number of commonsense ways to prevent, manage, and possibly eliminate these killers, turning the tide of African-American health. And he not only provides us with a construct for thought leadership in population health equity, he practices this type of care at his home-based primary care practice TVP-Care in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Walker has spent considerable time in researching the health and healthcare journey of African captives into slavery and understands what current African Americans now to need to do to survive nutritionally and culturally. He is truly on a mission to overcome the chronic ill health and early death that is so pervasive in Black communities. Most importantly, however, Dr. Walker is a leader in the value movement that believes traditional medicine should be merged with lifestyle medicine. He understands that African Americans can turn their health around by understanding and incorporating better nutrition, nutritional supplements, exercise, and regular healthcare checkups into their lives. In this important podcast discussion, we you will learn from a leading clinician and entrepreneur how we should go about improving Population Health Equity within African American communities in this Race to Value!

Episode Bookmarks:

01:30 Introduction to “Black Health Matters” and the work of Dr. Richard Walker in the health value movement

03:30 What does the use of the word “value” mean when it comes to community health?

05:00 Dr. Walker discusses his upbringing in Spanish Harlem and how that experience led him to become a physician leader seeking to advance health equity

07:00 The “mystery” of excessive hospitalizations due to sugar consumption and how that led to an epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes in the African American community

09:00 The misperception in the African American community that most common chronic diseases are genetic (instead of caused by environmental of lifestyle factors)

10:00 Dismantling the informational disadvantage that leads to a misunderstanding of Social Determinants of Health

12:00 The impact of the murder of George Floyd and the BLM social justice movement and how that inspired Dr. Walker to write “Black Health Matters”

14:30 How the collective experience of African Americans over the last 400+ years has been based on “waiting” (e.g. slavery, citizenship, civil rights)

16:00 “Taking care of your own life is all about taking charge of the environment by understanding the root causes that lead to disease.”

16:30 How poor nutrition in the African American community stems from the slavery era and persists to this day

17:30 The inadequate training of the healthcare workforce further exacerbates preexisting issues of poor health among African Americans

18:30 “Black Health Matters” is all about understanding the progenitors of chronic disease that are not genetic, and how to mitigate them in African American communities.

19:00 Environmental hazards and chemical toxicities are more common in underserved, minoritized communities

20:30 Research that confirms the presence of systemic issues in the healthcare industry related to institutional racism

22:00 “The concept of value-based care is transformational because it has the potential of changing the course in healthcare by recognizing the true value of the individual.”

23:30 Will value-based care bring us to the “Quintuple Aim” that includes health equity?

24:30 How the founding vision of Dr. Walker’s value-based,

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