What is FDA Doing to Improve the Health of African-Americans?

Posted on February 16, 2016 by FDA Voice

By: Jovonni Spinner, M.P.H., C.H.E.S.

Every February, we celebrate Black History Month – a time to reflect, celebrate, and honor the contributions of African-Americans to our society. We know that achieving and maintaining good health is a long-standing issue for this group, many of whom may experience worse health outcomes in critical areas like heart disease and diabetes. But, we want to focus on the positive and provide consumers with health education materials to support healthy behavior changes!

It’s true that the health equity gap has narrowed over time, but there is still significant room for improvement. Here are few things that the FDA and the Office of Minority Health (OMH) have done over the past year to reduce health disparities.

Public Engagement: More than 29.2 million blacks/African-Americans are on social media — and we want to meet consumers where they are. So we’re using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms and electronic communications (e.g. our newsletter and e-blasts) to educate African- Americans on issues such as heart disease, diabetes, and sickle cell disease among others, and also provide tangible solutions to help manage these chronic conditions.

For example, to mark American Heart Month in February, we developed a social media toolkit to help our stakeholders engage with their members and partnered with the Association of Black Cardiologists to spearhead an #ILoveMyHeart social media campaign.

Stakeholder Engagement: We have cultivated relationships with a core set of partners to better understand their health needs, aligned our priorities to meet those needs, and worked together to leverage each other’s resources for the common good. By doing so, we’ve increased our stakeholder’s capacity to communicate with the agency on regulatory issues. For example, multicultural stakeholders are now better able to make their voice heard in FDA-sponsored public meetings and on open dockets.

Minority Health Research: We worked with academia to fund African-American-based research projects (e.g. HIV/AIDs and triple negative breast cancer) and research fellows working on topics like genomics and digital communications. This allows us to increase the knowledge base on these issues and ensure a diverse workforce is in place to solve these complex health problems.

Resources: We have taken care to tailor our health education resources, such as infographics and fact sheets, to African Americans. Our website has valuable information on sickle cell disease and lupus, both of which affect African Americans more than any other racial/ethnic group.

Clinical Trial Diversity: Did you know that sometimes minority populations may respond differently to medical products? One example is an FDA-approved heart failure medication that reduces the risk of death and hospitalization in people with certain types of long-lasting/chronic heart failure.

During clinical trials, it was found there was an increased risk of an allergic reaction called angioedema in blacks. In this trial, only 5% of the participants were black, even though blacks represent 13% of the U.S. population and experience heart failure at rates higher than the rest of the population. This is why we continue to work toward increasing clinical trial diversity, to ensure that medical products are safe and effective for everyone!

President Obama has said, “If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” OMH will continue walking down the path to improving health equity and we want you to join us, because this work cannot be done alone.

Visit FDA’s OMH at: www.fda.gov/minorityhealth

Jovonni R. Spinner, M.P.H., C.H.E.S., is a Public Health Advisor in FDA’s Office of Minority Health