A DVD promoting HIV/AIDS prevention among black women is one of the first national projects developed in an unprecedented collaboration between the NAACP and Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company.
Pfizer, according to NAACP executives, will also serve as the exclusive sponsor of the Health Fair at the NAACP's national convention in July, providing free health screenings and health information to the more than 12,000 blacks expected to be in attendance.
The three-year, $1 million partnership between Pfizer and the nation’s oldest civil rights organization formalizes a long-standing relationship and will now accelerate distribution of health-care research and development of national advocacy programs for black Americans, officials said.
“This partnership is important because racial and ethnic health disparities disproportionately impact African-Americans,” Lucy Perez, national health director for the NAACP’s Health Advocacy Division, told BlackAmericaWeb.com last week.
“It’s not only good medicine; it’s good business to engage the African American community to help improve their health status,” Perez said. “This is the first partner to say to corporate America, ‘Let’s step up to the plate.’”
According to a 2002 Institute of Medicine report, blacks have the highest mortality rates of any U.S. racial and ethnic group, 1.6 times higher than that of whites. In a number of areas –- from specific diseases such as diabetes, cancer and HIV/AIDS to broader factors such as environmental toxicity and lack of health insurance –- black Americans across the United States suffer from hampered access to a full range of quality health-care services.
The AIDS rate among black women is three times as high as among Latino women and 18 times as high as that of white women, according to health officials. Today, black women make up more than half of all women who have died of AIDS.
In January, members of the Democratic Congressional Black Caucus met with President George W. Bush at the White House and listed racial disparities in health care as a key domestic issue the president should address.
Pfizer and the NAACP have already been working together, Perez said, to raise the issue of health awareness among blacks and mobilize NAACP members through health education, health screening programs and initiatives to provide senior citizens with access to health-care and prescription medicines.
Last year, the NAACP issued its Call to Action on Health, which calls on national, state and local health committees to develop and implement a five-year Healthcare Equity Partnership Plan for reducing the racial disparities in healthcare by at least 25 percent over the next five years. The NAACP produced the Call to Action on Health with help from Pfizer.
“The NAACP is a recognized advocate for civil rights,” J. Patrick Kelly, Pfizer’s president for U.S. Pharmaceuticals, told BlackAmericaWeb.com last week. “Pfizer's expertise is health. This partnership draws on our organizational strengths, through health information and advocacy, to combat health disparities and help improve the health and quality of life for all.”
“Through this partnership,” Kelly added, “we strive to empower African-Americans to live better lives by raising awareness of health disparities, sharing valuable health information and advocating to improve access to quality health care.”
Kelly said Pfizer will continue to work with the NAACP to distribute health information, develop and support the NAACP's Call to Action and provide research and data on health disparities.
The NAACP and Pfizer are also promoting "Women Like You," a video/DVD and discussion guide about women and HIV/AIDS that was jointly developed with the Los Angeles HIV Prevention Trials Unit. Pfizer medical and advocacy staffs are working with NAACP branches to train local leaders in the use of the program as an education and discussion tool.
Both organizations will also work together to expand access to health care, including prescription medicines, to the 45 million people across the country currently not covered by health insurance. This includes informing NAACP members about Helpful Answers, which provides all of America’s uninsured residents with access to Pfizer medicines free or at significant savings.
Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies have been under scrutiny by the media and some physicians for the rapidly rising costs of prescription drugs.
But Perez said the NAACP’s association with Pfizer, over the long run, will benefit millions of blacks who need access to updated health-care information.
“We’re taking this partnership,” Perez said, “to a new level.”
