Haircuts and hypertension may seem to have nothing in common but every Saturday at local barbershops and salons around Denver the two come together in an effort to improve the health of our community.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States for all adults but some minority groups are more prone to be affected by heart disease and stroke than others, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In Colorado alone, 30 percent of African-Americans have high blood pressure, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Power Saturday is a program aimed at addressing these statistics at the heart of the matter by offering free high blood pressure screenings, stroke risk surveys, educational sessions on healthy eating, stroke prevention, hypertension control and more at various barbershops and salons in the Denver-metro area.
The barbershop program is hosted by Colorado Black Health Collaborative (CBHC), a community-based organization dedicated to achieving health equity in Colorado’s African-American community and supported by the state’s largest nonprofit health plan, Kaiser Permanente Colorado as well as the American Heart Assoc.
The barbershop program is free and open to the public every Saturday and if you stop by one of the shops to participate, you’ll see me there. So come on down and we’ll have a conversation, just for the health of it!
For more information on where to find the next barbershop or salon where you can get your blood pressure checked, please visit: Coloradoblackhealth.org.
Terri Richardson, M.D., is an internal medicine physician practicing at Kaiser Permanente’s East Medical Offices in Aurora.