June 3, 2008
Race Relations Expert and Consultant to Cosby Show Delivers Saward Lecture on Health Disparities
Kaiser Permanente
Center for Health Research brings Harvard Psychiatrist and author
Alvin Poussaint
to Portland on June 24th
(PORTLAND, Ore.) June 03, 2008—In Multnomah County, African-Americans are twice
as likely as whites to die from diabetes and two to six times more likely to be
diagnosed
with a sexually transmitted disease. Hispanic teens here are six times
more likely than white teens to give birth. Author Alvin Poussaint says these health
disparities are indicative of what’s going on across America. In his latest book,
Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, Poussaint cites some examples:
- The infant mortality rate for African-Americans is twice that of white babies.
- Forty percent of African-American men die prematurely from cardiovascular disease, compared to 21% of white men.
- The death rate for HIV/AIDS is seven times greater for African-Americans than for white people.
Poussaint believes we can close the gap in health care disparities, and he will
tell us how during the 18th annual Saward Lecture, sponsored by the Kaiser Permanente
Center for Health Research.
The lecture will take place on June 24 at 7:30 p.m.
at the Newmark Theatre in Portland (1111 SW Broadway). Tickets for the lecture are
free and available by emailing sawardlecture@kpchr.org or by calling 503-335-2466.
“Dr. Poussaint
has a gift for seeing hope and possibility in the most challenging
of circumstances,” says Mary Durham, PhD, Director of the Kaiser Permanente Center
for Health Research. “That’s why we invited him to deliver the lecture and officially
kick off the search for a top-caliber scientist to fill our new endowed chair of
health disparities.”
The new position honors Dr. Mitch Greenlick, the founding director
of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research, who will also be honored at the
Saward Lecture. Under Greenlick’s leadership from 1964 to 1995, CHR became a nationally
renowned research institution that played a key role in federal legislation to provide
health care to disadvantaged populations.
“I’m absolutely thrilled and honored to
have the endowed scientist position created and named for me,” says Dr. Greenlick,
who is currently serving his fourth term in the Oregon State Legislature. “This
marks the intersection of three things that have been central to my professional
life – the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, health services research,
and improving the health care of disadvantaged members of society.”
Dr. Poussaint
will be the 18th speaker of this annual lecture series, which is named for Dr. Ernie
Saward (1914–1989), the founding medical director of Kaiser Permanente Northwest,
who retired in 1970.
Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research, founded in 1964, is a non-profit
research institution whose mission is advancing knowledge to improve health. It
has research sites in Portland, OR; Honolulu, HI; and Atlanta, GA.
For more infomation contact:
Mary Sawyers,
(503) 335-6602, Mary.A.Sawyers@kpchr.org
or
Gail Mathabane, (503) 758-9024, Gail.Mathabane@kpchr.org