This is the second year that a handful of University of Pennsylvania students have periodically dropped into a predominantly African American barbershop on a Saturday afternoon, armed with blood-pressure cuffs, literature, and a yearning to make a difference long before they don their white coats.
The rationale is simple: Black men have the lowest life expectancy (70 years for someone born in 2007) of any major demographic group, and some of the highest rates of conditions like hypertension (41 percent) that play a role in mortality. They are less likely to go to the doctor.
But they visit a barbershop every one or two weeks.
Some call it the black men's country club.
"I refer to it as a watering hole," says Darryl Thomas, the owner of Philly Cuts at 44th and Chestnut Streets. Everyone comes to get groomed. They mix. They talk. They allow the barbers into their personal space.
And they listen when Thomas calls out: Hey man, get your blood pressure checked!
Akinleye, who is in his third year at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, started the barbershop program last year after seeing a demonstration at a Student National Medical Association meeting. Several other chapters around the country are doing it. In some cases, barbers are trained to take blood-pressure readings and talk with customers on their own.
As concern about health disparities and cultural gaps in care has risen on the medical agenda, a number of physicians around the country have started barbershop screenings for prostate cancer, diabetes, and sickle-cell anemia, building on familial connections of the sort that led playwright August Wilson to reminisce about Hamm's barbershop of his Pittsburgh childhood.
'Unfiltered dialogue'
