A Black Male Health Disparity Summit is being held on the campus of Meharry Medical College to address several health disparity issues affecting African American men this Friday and Saturday, May 3 and 4. The goal of the summit is to diffuse, dissipate, and disperse Black male health disparities, just like a prism that diffuses white light into its variously colored components. Summit objectives are to build the capacity of health care professionals, educators and community leaders to refract the historical stigmatization, housing inequalities, family disruptions, educational disparities, environmental toxins and legal and social justice inequalities that form the substrates for such health disparities through appropriate education and research and health policy changes.
The summit begins Friday with ‘The Historical Significance of Black Male Stigmatization’ and ‘Health Disparities in Male Cancers.’ Then there is a keynote address on ‘Federal Research Initiatives to Ameliorate Black Male Health Disparities’ at the Elam Mental Health Center 52nd anniversary Celebratory Luncheon. There are afternoon panels on ‘Black Male Health Disparity Dispersion in Progress at the Elam Center’; ‘Early Detection of Illicit Drug Use in Teenagers’; and ‘Family and Housing Ecology Factors in Black Male Health Disparities.’ Saturday features ‘To Know Better is to DO Better’; ‘Black Male Health Disparities and Health Policy Change’; a luncheon on ‘Black Male Opiate Addiction Reduction;’ ‘Black Men in America—Lives in Danger’; ‘The Law and Forensic Psychiatry in Black Male Health Disparities’; and a ‘wrap-up’: ‘Summit Outcomes.’
Summit speakers include Dr. Reavis L. Mitchell, Jr. Fisk University; Dr. Shirley Rainey-Brown, Fisk University; Dr. Derek M. Griffith, Vanderbilt University; Dr. John Ruffin, keynote speaker, National Institutes of Health; Dr. Duane T. Smoot, Meharry Medical College; Dr. Shahid Ali, Meharry Medical College; Dr. Stephen McLeod-Bryant, Meharry Medical College; Dr. William D. Richie, Meharry Medical College; and Dr. Jeffery Menzise, Morgan State University.
The fourth annual Dr. Lloyd C. Elam Symposium, ‘Black Males: A Summit on Health Disparity Dispersion,’ will be held in the S.S. Kresge Learning Resources Center, Compton-Nelson Auditorium.
It is co-sponsored by the Treatment Access Project II, a treatment program for the homeless funded by a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and by SISTER’S Story II—a case management and social services program for low-income, addicted mothers, funded by the state of Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
Meharry has a leading Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences that has been meeting the needs of the Middle Tennessee community for 52 years. Former Meharry President, the late Lloyd C. Elam, M.D., was the founder of the Department in 1961, and the mental health center that bears his name.
Dr. Rahn K. Bailey proposed an annual symposium to honor the memory and extraordinary contributions of Dr. Elam. Bailey is the chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and executive director of the Elam Mental Health Center since 2008. He also serves as the president of the National Medical Association.
The symposium will also highlight the faculty and programs of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Elam Mental Health Center.
