A Buzz Cut And A Checkup?

When he saw that African-American men were too embarrassed to go into a health clinic, a Chicago health reformer found a solution: Open a barber shop inside.

The creative solution was one that New Haveners contemplated at a community health forum Monday.

The discussion about health disparities stemmed from a public screening of a locally made film.

The short film, called ​“3000 Miles,” was created by a group of teens from The Color of Words . It was screened Monday night at the small theater of Coop High School on College Street. The title comes from the number of miles they walked around six New Haven neighborhoods this past summer as they conducted a community survey of health assets, problems and solutions, in collaboration with CARE — the Yale-based Community Alliance for Research & Engagement. Click here for a previous story. They focused on improving diet and exercise and reducing smoking as three ways to reduce health disparities between inner city, mostly black and Latino residents, and the mostly white population of the rest of the state.

The teens, who worked in pairs under the supervision of an adult, learned a lot about their hometown. One said she never knew there was a jail (New Haven Correctional Facility on Whalley Avenue) right in her neighborhood. Another said it was too dangerous for kids to play in area parks, so they needed somewhere else to get exercise and let off steam. Another said by surveying local stores, she learned that ads for cigarettes and alcohol were posted right at kid eye level.

About 60 people, including parents and community activists, attended the screening and participated in the conversation that followed a brief presentation by Dr. Eric Whitaker (in photo at top of story), associate dean for community-based research at the University of Chicago Medical Center. He got the audience’s attention when he mentioned that he grew up in a poor neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, very near where he now works, and that as a youngster he’d been pistol-whipped about two blocks from where a young African American honors student was beaten to death in gang-related violence two months ago.

Barber Shop Experiment

Whitaker has already facilitated some of the changes New Haveners are talking about. For one thing, he started a clinic geared to the neighborhood’s African American men, who had been unlikely to seek health care. They told him it was the best and worst thing to have the clinic right there — good because they could easily get care, bad because others they knew could see them walk in and know they were vulnerable. ​“And we can’t look vulnerable,” they told him, as a matter of survival. So they suggested Whitaker put a barber shop in the building, which he did, so men could access care under the guise of getting a haircut.

He then paid men to participate in a one-shot focus group. After participating, they asked, ​“When do we meet again?” No one had ever asked them their opinion on anything before, and they were so eager to continue the conversation they said they’d come without compensation.

p(clear). Lee Cruz (pictured), who works at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven but was speaking as a resident and community activist in Fair Haven, said that well-meaning funders can be part of the problem when they see people in low-income neighborhoods only as receivers of services, not initiators of change.

p(clear). CARE Director Jeannette Ickovics (pictured on the left with Magalis Martinez, executive director of The Color of Words, on the right) encouraged audience members ​“to work together for sustainable changes. We need structural change. We make an investment, whether that’s in bricks and mortar or changes in policy, like subsidizing healthy food, or creating laws [mandating] green space, or turning school buses into walking school buses, where bus drivers walk [their charges] to school.”

p(clear). When community activist Lindy Gold asked the young moviemakers what they would consider a tangible result that would justify their efforts, Shawanda Miller (pictured on the right in photo at top of story with director of the video, college student Dennis Reynolds on the left) reiterated the sentiment she expressed in the video, when she said she wanted ​“every voice to be heard.”

p(clear). ​“I would consider it a tangible result,” she said, ​“if more youth understand what a healthier neighborhood is, because it’s hard to get to the youth, and sometimes the only way is through other youth.”