Fayetteville - The North Carolina Office of Minority Health & Health Disparities (OMHHD) recently funded Operation Sickle Cell, Inc.’s, (OSC) Minority Health Initiative. Ms. Barbara Pullen-Smith is the OMHHD Director. The Minority Health initiative includes outreach activities to the community and an annual Regional Minority Health Summit. The Summit was held last March at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church. The next Summit is scheduled for March 22, 2007 on the campus of Fayetteville State University. The Summit provided a forum where community leaders and other stakeholders came together to examine issues with regard to minority health. Summit participants shared strategies and models for providing solutions within the community, to create effective partnerships to deliver care; and access to resources needed to create programs that will benefit minority populations. The primary Summit facilitators were Dr. Beny J. Primm (Brooklyn, NY) and Dr. Annelle B. Primm (Baltimore, MD), an African American father and daughter team. Dr. (Beny) Primm is a widower whose deceased spouse was a Fayetteville native. He also served as an Army officer at Fort Bragg before receiving his degree in medicine from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) in 1959. In 1969, he founded the Addiction Research Treatment Corporation and has been the executive director ever since. A.R.T.C., located in Brooklyn, New York, is one of the largest minority nonprofit community-based substance abuse treatment programs in the country, treating more than 2,300 men and women from underserved communities. Dr. (Annelle) Primm earned her medical degree from Howard University (1980) and completed her residency in psychiatry at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In 1985, she co-founded a program called COSTAR (Community Support Treatment and Rehabilitation), which provided in-home mental health treatment to patients. She has worked as a psychiatrist and produced the videotape called Black and Blue that highlighted depression in the African American community and encouraged minorities to seek treatment for mental illness.
The Cumberland County Minority Health Initiative also successfully petitioned Chairman Billy R. King and the County Board of Commissioners to appoint a Minority Health Task Force to address this rapidly growing challenge facing Cumberland County. The task force still in its developmental stages had its first meeting December 6. Concerned community leaders also met with Congressman Robin Hayes on October 26th. Rep. Hayes said, "Access to affordable and quality healthcare is important to our communities and is one of my top priorities. This next Congress will continue to make improvements to our healthcare system and it was important to me to meet with the Cumberland County Minority Health Task Force this year to make sure their community voices are part of the legislative process."
The Cumberland County Minority Health Initiative partners thus far include: Operation Sickle Cell, Inc., Fayetteville State University’s Health Disparities & Research Center, the Cumberland County Dept. of Health, the Cumberland County Dept. of Social Services, Cumberland County Mental Health, Cape Fear Valley Health Systems, and the Sherri Arnold Graham Foundation.
OSC’s Executive Director Mary E. McAllister said, "there will be no simple or painless solutions to health problems facing the black community. The health challenges facing the black community will require a new social contract that promotes adaptive change."
