NEW YORK, Dec. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Choose Healthy
Life Black Clergy Action Plan, a group of the nation's leading
Black clergy led by Rev.
Al Sharpton and Rev. Calvin O. Butts, III, convened a meeting
yesterday with Dr. Anthony
Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, and other top doctors including the National
Medical Association to address racial health disparities, fighting
COVID-19 in the Black community
and the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.
"It is critical to address the racial disparities of COVID-19
deaths and hospitalizations in the United
States," said Dr. Fauci. "Reaching out through trusted
messengers and advocates like the leaders from the Black Church is
critically important as we communicate to the hardest hit
communities. We must also remain vigilant as the vaccine is rolled
out by continuing to use the tools we currently have at our
disposal and that includes testing."
Choose Healthy Life is a sustainable, scalable and
transferable approach to address public health disparities through
the Black Church. The Action Plan, being rolled out in partnership
with the United Way of New York
City and Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) in
January, will lead the fight against COVID-19 by providing
preventative education, vaccine awareness and greater access to
COVID-19 testing.
The meeting included Dr. Nancy
Messonnier, Director of the National Center for Immunization
and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, and former CDC Director Dr.
Tom Frieden, President of Resolve to
Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies. Now that COVID-19
vaccines have been approved by the FDA and are being administered,
the nation's top doctors stressed the importance of communicating
that the vaccines are safe, effective and necessary to beat this
pandemic.
"We must work together with community leaders like those from
the Black Church to provide accurate information, build trust and
ensure a successful rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine." said Dr.
Nancy Messonnier. "Today's
dialogue with the Choose Healthy Life Black Clergy Leadership
Council was a critical step in community outreach and engagement
between the medical communities and local faith leaders."
"As religious leaders, it is our duty to advocate for the health
and survival of our community, provide our congregations with
accurate information and guide society at large to a place of moral
well-being," said Rev. Al
Sharpton. "As Martin Luther King Jr. once said,
religious leaders should serve as a thermostat that transforms
society, not a thermometer that takes the temperature and allows
social pressure to influence it."
"Today's summit featured a critical exchange of ideas and
emphasized the historic importance of the Black Church in fighting
public health crises in the Black
community," said Rev. Calvin O.
Butts. "Following the methods deployed by Debra Fraser-Howze in the 1980s and 1990s,
Black religious leaders are now
taking the lead in providing testing and critical information to
the Black community during the
COVID-19 pandemic."
"Today was a landmark moment in our history as faith and science
joined together to stand against this deathly plague attacking the
Black Community," said
Debra Fraser-Howze, founder
of the Choose Healthy Life Black Clergy Action Plan and advisor to
two U.S. Presidents on HIV and AIDS from 1998 to 2003. "Together,
with our partners at Quest Diagnostics, the United Way of
New York City, and Resolve to Save
Lives, we will work to ensure that our communities are informed,
our voices are heard and our communities remain safe."
"Today, United Way of New York
City participated in a powerful dialogue between leaders of
the scientific and faith communities on the urgency of COVID-19
testing, prevention and vaccination," said Sheena Wright, President and CEO of
United Way of New York
City. "Low income Black communities are being disproportionately
devastated by COVID-19 and UWNYC is proud to partner with our
nation's Black clergy to
strengthen community-based efforts for increased COVID-19 public
health education, awareness and testing."
"At Quest Diagnostics, the insights from the testing we perform
reveal the devastating impacts of COVID-19 in underserved
communities," said Ruth
Clements, Vice President and General Manager of
Infectious Diseases & Immunology and leader for Quest for
Health Equity at Quest Diagnostics. "We are proud to be part
of this important conversation, and proud to team up with Choose
Healthy Life and United Way of New York
City to address the need in the Black community."
Today's virtual discussion, held over Zoom, included more than
50 Black clergy leaders from across the country who are stepping up
to unite with the scientific community during this unprecedented
time.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), Black people are
hospitalized from COVID-19 at a rate approximately five (5) times
that of non-Hispanic white persons and, according to a recent
Johns Hopkins University study,
Black individuals in some
communities are dying at a rate nearly seven (7) times higher than
other population groups.
This initiative is being led by the Choose Healthy Life National
Black Clergy Health Leadership Council, which is chaired by Rev.
Sharpton (National Action Network, New
York, N.Y.) and Rev. Butts (Abyssinian Baptist Church,
New York, N.Y.) and includes
council members Rev. David Jefferson
(Metropolitan Baptist Church, Newark,
N.J.); Reverend Jacques
DeGraff (Canaan Baptist Church of Christ, New York, N.Y.); Rev. Horace Sheffield (New Destiny Christian
Fellowship, Detroit, Mich.); Rev.
Frank Tucker (First Baptist Church,
Washington D.C.); and Rev.
Raphael Warnock (Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga.).
Funding support for this initiative has been made possible
through grants from founding sponsor Quest Diagnostics, the Quest
Diagnostics Foundation and from Resolve to Save Lives, an
initiative of Vital Strategies.
To learn more about Choose Healthy Life, please
click here.
About Choose Healthy Life
Choose Healthy Life Black Clergy Action Plan is a program
developed by D. Fraser Associates (DFA) based on the DFA Choose
Healthy Life Standard – a sustainable, scalable and transferable
approach to public health. The highly successful Standard was
created by Debra Fraser-Howze,
principal at DFA and founder of the National Black Leadership
Commission on AIDS, to address the AIDS epidemic. It is centered
around the Black church – the
oldest and most trusted institutions in the Black community. Partnering with the United
Way agencies, local health departments and community-based
organizations, churches receive the necessary resources, training
and support to make available health services to the region's most
vulnerable individuals. The Choose Healthy Life Black Clergy Action
Plan has been made possible through the support of founding partner
Quest Diagnostics, the Quest Diagnostics Foundation and from
Resolve to Save Lives, a global health initiative focused on
helping advance scalable, proven strategies to prevent and address
epidemics. To learn more, visit: www.ChooseHealthyLife.org
About United Way of New York
City
United Way of New York
City (UWNYC) fights for the self-sufficiency of every
low-income New Yorker by taking on the toughest challenges and
creating new solutions to old problems. We win by helping families
shift from barely surviving to thriving. We unite by mobilizing the
best ideas, relevant data, internal and external experts, and
resources—from money to manpower. UWNYC maximizes impact by
coordinating and aligning organizations, companies, local
government, and New Yorkers to help families eliminate tough
choices and live better while making ends meet. To learn more,
visit: www.unitedwaynyc.org.
About Quest Diagnostics
Quest Diagnostics empowers people to take action to improve
health outcomes. Derived from the world's largest database of
clinical lab results, our diagnostic insights reveal new avenues to
identify and treat disease, inspire healthy behaviors and improve
health care management. Quest Diagnostics annually serves one in
three adult Americans and half the physicians and hospitals in
the United States, and our 47,000
employees understand that, in the right hands and with the right
context, our diagnostic insights can inspire actions that transform
lives. www.QuestDiagnostics.com.
About Resolve to Save Lives
Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies, aims to
prevent at least 100 million deaths from cardiovascular disease and
epidemics. Through its Prevent Epidemics program, Resolve to Save
Lives has rapidly leveraged existing networks to partner with
countries throughout Africa and
beyond to combat COVID-19. Resolve is led by Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, and is part of the global
health organization Vital Strategies. To find out more
visit: https://www.resolvetosavelives.org or Twitter
@ResolveTSL. Resolve to Save Lives created a website called
PreventEpidemics.org that shows how prepared each country is
for an epidemic, including COVID-19. This site is also a
resource for current coronavirus statistics and resources.
National Co-Chairs
Rev. Calvin O. Butts,
III
Abyssinian Baptist Church
Rev. Al Sharpton
National Action Network
Members
Rev. Jacques DeGraff
New York, N.Y.
Canaan Baptist Church
Rev. David Jefferson
Newark, N.J.
Metropolitan Baptist Church
Rev. Horace Sheffield
Detroit, Mich.
New Destiny Christian Fellowship
Rev. Frank D. Tucker
Washington, D.C.
First Baptist Church
Rev. Raphael Warnock
Atlanta, Ga.
Ebenezer Baptist Church
Founder
Debra Fraser-Howze
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SOURCE Quest Diagnostics; Choose Healthy Life