Dr. Norma J. Goodwin, 82, pioneering medical doctor and minority health communicator extraordinaire, died on April 13 at the Brooklyn Downstate Medical Center. The cause was COVID-19 and pneumonia. Dr. Goodwin set her sights high on improving health outcomes for American people of color – Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. She scuttled her career in medicine, but she did not disappoint, as we measure her successes as the Founder/CEO of three businesses – Health Watch and Promotion Service, AMRON Consultants and Health Power for Minorities.
Launched in 1984, Health Watch and Promotion Service was a national nonprofit for minority health headquartered in a four-story brownstone on Glenwood Avenue in Brooklyn, which Goodwin eventually purchased. The staff, a mix of social workers, health professionals and grant-writers, worked feverishly, bolstered by Goodwin’s drive and determination to succeed in foreign territory far removed from her life as a physician. Health Watch culture was always in multitask mode. The office was equal parts workspace with desks and computer stations, and also offered afterschool amenities for employees’ children. Nothing was off-limits on the HW radar. The organization would grow into a reliable venue for the latest insights about the national health as it pertained to minority populations. The HW glossary covered subjects ranging from racial disparities in healthcare, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, HIV/AIDS, infant mortality, aging and stroke, to teen obesity and national teen-dating violence. Focus-group sessions, rigorous research, telephone- and on-site counseling, creating health messages for minority audiences, digital brainstorming and creating Health Watch newsletters and manuals, are parts of a typical HW workday.
Health Watch, Goodwin’s maiden entrepreneurial effort, became a household name in local and national African American health circles and beyond. The group was popular with elite corporations like the Wrigley Corporation and CBS-TV, which sought both HW counsel and opportunities to partner with Goodwin on projects to reach her large audience of minority followers. By the mid ‘90s Health Watch was a regular fixture at the National Medical Association Convention. (The NMA is a trade group of African American doctors founded in 1895), where it would host breakfast or lunch receptions for hundreds of guests, competing with corporate American parties. Health Watch also had an interface with the National Black Baptist Convention. It touched all bases. Goodwin was inundated with requests for speaking engagements and to be interviewed about the Health Watch juggernaut by mainstream media like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Daily News, and by Black media alike.
The Health Watch goal, stipulated by Dr. Goodwin, was to improve health outcomes for multicultural communities, and by any means necessary. Health Watch would customize health messages for corporate clients, which would embed in ad-buys targeted to urban radio and TV audiences. A Wrigley gum ad was a popular promotion, reaching large audiences “who got the message.” A 24/7 sex-education hotline for teen consumers was also exceedingly effective. Other strategic partners include Big Pharma’s Merck and GlaxoKlineSmith and CBS-TV. HW co-hosted health forums with the Brooklyn-based Caribbean Women’s Health Association a few times annually.
Grants kept Health Watch’s budget afloat. The Center for Disease Control, the NYS Health Department, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health were regular sources of grants and support, as was the HW Annual Awards Dinner Benefit, a $500 subscription gala, which was held at the Waldorf Astoria and Tavern on The Green, venues where its corporate titans, politicos, health professionals and medics were honored.
One of Health Watch’s most ambitious projects, again the brainchild of Dr. Goodwin, was a daylong HIV/AIDS teleconference with closed-circuit links to about 10 urban markets across the nation. It was held at the New York Academy of Medicine. Medical doctors and prominent American health officials participated in the “Stand Up For Your Life” campaign of infomercials targeting minority adolescents.
When Health Watch dissolved in 2002, Health Power for Minorities arrived as a unique digital health-news service posting blogs and stories written by a diverse roster of doctors and health professionals. Healthpowerforminorities.com was among the top five Google sites for minorities and boasted more than three million hits annually.
EPILOGUE: Look at Dr. Goodwin’s pre-Health Watch/ healthpowerforminorities.com world! Born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1937, Goodwin had been a candidate for great expectations. She graduated from HS at 15, earned her BS from Virginia State at age 19 and was one of the first Blacks to graduate from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. She fled Jim Crow life and relocated to Brooklyn, where she completed an internship in internal medicine at Kings County Hospital and completed a residency in nephrology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. In the ‘60s she was the first woman and African American physician to become vice president of the NY Hospital Association. Had she survived COVID-19 she would have battled the pandemic with a vengeance.
In Memoriam R.I.P. Dr. Norma J. Goodwin
What’s Going On
Earth Day turns 50 on April 24. The golden anniversary will be remembered for the plague – coronavirus – as the planet battles for the life of its inhabitants. In four months the virus has ravaged the planet with 2,472,259 cases reported worldwide, with 169,986 deaths. In the United States, there have been 42,000 deaths, including 14,347 New Yorkers.
Coronavirus has changed the society in ways large and small, and this is only the beginning of what the new normal will be. The big business today is the business of battling the coronavirus so that American businesses can be resuscitated. On Monday, April 20, President Trump announced that via executive order he would temporarily suspend all immigration to the United States, the result of coronavirus. Too little, too late. Is this supposed to interrupt infections? He has suspended travel to the USA by Europeans and by Africans, by way of a ban of about 12 nations. The mayhem plot twists and turns so often with POTUS 45, it is hard to document or process. Last week, he threatened to suspend both chambers of Congress, which he argued he is empowered to do. He is not! Then he set a date for America to be open for business again, around early May, also not his jurisdiction. Alas, his business taskforce and American CEOs are not quite ready for that May Day recipe for disaster. Then he says that Governors could decide when their state was ready to return to a normal business routine. That was followed by GOP orchestrated demonstrations in states run by Democratic governors, unready to lift lockdown policies until the COVID19 threat recedes. POTUS45 and the GOP seem to be nervous about the November elections.
Why would Trump withdraw US funds from WHO, the World Health Organization, in the midst of a horrific pandemic? It does not help that WHO leader is Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. We know how Trump feels about Africans. On Tuesday, America’s two caesars, NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo and Donald Trump re scheduled to meet at the White House. Oh, to be a fly on the wall!
COVID-19/NYC
SOCIETY
The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation opened applications for its $5000 Small Business (3 to 20 Employees) Grants for employers severely harmed by the COVID-19 Pandemic…. Shea Moisturizer has three programs totaling $1million – for businesses supporting communities through COVID-19, for Black-owned businesses facing COVID- related hardships and a program targeted to Black women entrepreneurs. Visit. Sheamoisture.com and go to COVID-19 Small Business Report or instagram@sheamoisture…. The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce partnered with the borough president’s office “to get businesses the relief they deserve.” Join the Small Business Hotline via the Brooklyn App for more info.
COVID-19 FATALITIES
R.I.P.: Dr Julia Butler, veterinarian founder of the 145 Street Animal Hospital, died two weeks ago. A Harlem fixture for more than 26 years, the Hospital is located at 454 West 145 Street. She earned her Doctorate at the Cornell Veterinary School and was founder/Co Vice President of NY Save Animals In Veterinary Emergency.
R.I.P.: Fine artist, art historian, curator David Driskell 88, died in a hospital near Hyattsville, Maryland, on April 1. He started Howard University as a history major until the art department appropriated him in his freshman year. Later he taught at Talledega, Howard, and Fisk – the latter at which he had oversight of the Georgia O’Keefe art donation. Raconteur extraordinaire, he was cultured a renaissance man. He spent most of his life advocating for African American art. A prolific fine artist, he curated art shows and has an impressive bibliography. Art world cognoscenti called him the Dean of African American art. ArtNews perhaps captured his essence, in a remembrance saying, “He not only contributed to the development and expansion of Black art and culture within the American art canon, but also insisted on the importance of conveying the truths of Blackness and its complicated discontents.”
R.I.P.: Dr, Norma Jean Goodwin, MD, 82, died on April 13, at Brooklyn Downstate Hospital. Founder of two Brooklyn-based national health organizations, Health Watch and Health Power for Minorities, which advocated for improved health outcomes for the nation’s minority populations. R.I.P.: Dr. Roy Hastick, 69, died on April 9. Grenada-Born Hastick migrated to the US in 1972, settled in Brooklyn and worked as a community advocate, entrepreneur and newspaper publisher until he founded the highly successful Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce in 1985, which boasts a membership of upwards of 1800 businesses. His latest ambition, a Caribbean American Trade and Culture Center, will be merged into the Flatbush Caton Flats, a project under construction.
FOOD SHOPPING GUIDE
Food shopping made easy during the quarantine. Check out wholesalers who normally sell to restaurants selling and delivering food to NYC residents. Visit shop.chefswarehouse.com and/or visit ny.eater.com/21203557/nyc-restaurant grocery. Other food delivery services include Amazon Fresh & Amazon Pantry; FreshDirect.com; Peopod; Instacart.com; Foodkick.com and Shipt.com. Bon Appetit!
NY PRIMARY
NY Primary will be held on June 23 for congressional and state legislators races. Absentee ballots will be sent to all registered voters. Many congressional representatives will face challengers. COVID-19 is trumping so many distractions. The plague willy-nilly will probably help incumbents. Tiffany Caban, who came this close to a recent Queens County District Attorney’s office victory, is endorsing progressive candidates to Congress and the Albany chambers. Wall Street is investing big dollars on candidates who want to oppose Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (AOC). The newbie progressive challengers may have to pin their hopes on the 2022 election.
NEWSMAKERS
Happy Birthday Taureans: Diahnne Abbott; Tony Barboza, fine arts photog; Ghanaian Andrea Barnieh; Davies Burton; fine artist Ramona Candy; fine artist Sadikisha Collier; Rosario Dawson; Patricia Pates Eaton, opera diva: Richard Habersham, candidate for 13th Congressional district; Bernice Green, Our Time Press; Roy Paul, Cents Ability; Jeanne Parnell WHCR-FM host: Toni Fay; Rolando Horsford, realtor; Janet Jackson; Grace Jones; Ed Lewis, The Man From Essence; Chrispin Roy Miller, Jamerica: Dr. Khalil Muhammad, Harvard University; Philanthropist Brenda Neal; Harriette Mandeville, Lotus Hawk Prayers and Meditations; flautist Bobbi Humphrey; Kenan Thompson, The Kenan Show and SNL; Margaret Porter Troupe: Harlem Arts Salon; George Williams, DDS; and Stevie Wonder
Atlanta Struggles to Fulfill MLK’s Legacy in Health Care
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp wants to declare the state open for business on Friday April 24, against all expert medical opinion, the federal guidelines and the strong opposition of many of the state’s mayors.
Kemp won reelection in a highly controversial election characterized by suppression of the African-American vote. His insistence on reopening the state in spite of warnings and impact on Black and Latino communities because of the health disparities detailed below, suggests he’s taking voter suppression to an entirely new level. Well, not really entirely new. They used to lynch Black people outright.
Virginia Anderson, NPR.org, 2018
“We have world-class health care facilities in Atlanta, but the challenge is that we’re still seeing worse outcomes” for African-Americans, says Kathryn Lawler, executive director of the Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement. That group includes representatives of more than 100 nonprofit organizations, governments, hospital systems and other health care providers working to improve access and care for minority communities.
“We did certain things here, we went through the civil rights era, and we did things like desegregation, but we just over the years never kept the conversation going,” says Tom Andrews, president of Mercy Care, a health center that serves mainly homeless Atlantans, the vast majority of whom are African-American.
Among the problems:
— Atlanta has the widest gap in breast cancer mortality rates between African-American women and white women of any U.S. city, with 44 black patients per 100,000 residents dying compared with 20 per 100,000 white women, according to a study in the journal Cancer Epidemiology in 2016.
— It is the city with the nation’s highest death rate for Black men with prostate cancer — 49.7 deaths per 100,000 residents. The mortality rate for white men in Atlanta is 19.3, the National Cancer Institute reports.
— There’s a 12-year or greater difference in life span among neighborhoods in Fulton County, of which Atlanta is the county seat. Those living in the city’s Bankhead or Northwest neighborhoods, which are predominantly Black, fare worse when compared to those who live in affluent, mainly white Buckhead, researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University found.
— Large gaps in mortality exist between African-Americans and whites in such diseases as HIV, stroke and diabetes, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health.
African-Americans make up just over half of the city’s residents. But a recent study found that 80 percent of Black children here live in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty, which often have poor access to quality medical care, while 6 percent of white children do. Several of the neighborhoods with predominately minority communities have poverty rates higher than 40 percent.
“I think we should be further along in Atlanta, but I think we should be further along in all cities in this country,” says Dr. David Satcher, a former U.S. surgeon general and now senior adviser at the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine here.
The health gaps between African-Americans and whites in Atlanta and other cities aren’t because of shortcomings in the health care system alone, according to people who have studied the issue. They are also the result of decades of discrimination.
“It’s a constellation of things,” says Thomas LaVeist, chairman of the department of health policy and management at the George Washington University’s school of public health in Washington, D.C. “African-Americans couldn’t own land, wealth couldn’t transfer from one generation to the next. Those were advantages [for whites] that were formed decades ago.”
“The disparities are really national problems,” he adds, “and there really is not a city that’s spared.”
The result has been, public health officials say, lower incomes, lower levels of education, higher stress, unsafe neighborhoods, lack of insurance and a host of other social factors that combine, over the years, to create differences in quality of health.
Abundance of Healthcare, For Some
Atlanta is a major health care hub, home to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Cancer Society, Arthritis Foundation, two schools of medicine and several universities that offer degrees in public health.
Yet health care is still scarce in many poor neighborhoods.
“Atlanta spends $11 billion on health care in a given year, but much of that is misspent,” says Lawler with the Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement. Too many patients end up in emergency rooms, for example, because they don’t have a primary care doctor or seek treatment after their illnesses are much more advanced, she added.
In addition, after being diagnosed, getting treatment can be difficult for some, says American Cancer Society’s Otis Brawley. African-American women are nearly four times more likely than whites to forgo treatment for breast cancer, which can include a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, he says.
Those involved in seeking better care for Atlanta’s poor say the lack of insurance coverage also plays a huge role in the problem. Yet, that, too, is tied to race, since twice as many African-Americans than whites are uninsured in Georgia.
“One of the greatest barriers to care in all these states that didn’t expand Medicaid [under the Affordable Care Act] is lack of insurance,” says Brawley. “And it happened in all of the states of the ‘Old Confederacy.’ This is a huge racial insult.”
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Official Statement from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan on the Passing of Minister Abdul Hafeez Muhammad
Minister Louis Farrakhan
National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam in the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Words are inadequate to express the pain, the shock, the turbulent thought processes that the passing of Brother Abdul Hafeez Muhammad has stirred in me, in my family, in his family and the members of Mosque Number 7 and in the Nation in general.
It is not an accident that we are one year from my speaking to the joy of some and the chagrin of others at the Staples Center celebrating the life, the work and the passing of Ermias Asghedom known to the world as Nipsey Hussle.
The death of Brother Abdul Hafeez has affected me like no other; like the passing of Kobe Bryant, that the shock of his passing sent me to Allah to try to grasp the meaning of his life, the meaning of his death and how it directly affects me and the Nation of Islam.
As my spirit was troubled at the passing of Nipsey Hussle, and my spirit further troubled by the passing of Kobe Bryant, I had to go to Allah to try to understand the significance of what time and circumstances has made us a part of.
As with Brother Kobe, I could not think more of the circumstances of his death than seeking the Author of his life, the meaning of his death. With the passing of Brother Hafeez, I could not look at the coronavirus, the means by which he left us; I wanted to know from Allah why him, why now, why from this disease that has plagued the planet? Why? So whenever I’m troubled like this I seek refuge in Allah to find answers. So I’m not quick to speak until I’m armed with more than the emotion of sadness and the surface understanding of the means by which he died. I must know from the Highest Authority why his death has affected me and us so deeply. What is the meaning of the message of his death?
I am praying and staying up through nights seeking that I might be able to understand more clearly God’s purpose for taking His servant at this time in this manner from this virus. As my spirit is troubled as I write these words, I will continue to seek the answer of Allah and be patient as the answer unfolds.
But know this, he was not an ordinary man. His service in the Nation and to our people was not ordinary. His commitment to the total liberation of our people here and wherever they are on this planet, was not ordinary.
The fact that he died like the passing of the great pastor from Alabama Reverend Joseph Lowery and those who were affected by Joe Lowery and those who were affected by Brother Hafeez have no opportunity to express it at this time. But when the indignation of God has passed maybe then we can have a proper memorial service for him, and for some others who have passed that cannot have a proper burial at this time.
Do you know that in our prayers as Muslims when we say: ‘Surely my prayer, my sacrifice, my life and my death is all for Allah, the Lord of the Worlds,’ we live to be martyred for a cause bigger than our lives? So we live and die on our post. This is the kind of spiritual warrior that Brother Hafeez was and is, and we hope that we will follow him and die as we live; to die the death of the righteous.
May Allah Bless his wife and his family, his fellow Laborers in New York and throughout the Nation and the world. May we be comforted in our loss and may we be inspired by his life and jump up and make a faster pace in the liberation struggle of all our people.
I mourn with all who knew and loved him and I write to you as one of the mourners who seek the peace and contentment of mind that only Allah (God) can give when we surrender; that the life, the work, and the death of our brother is the Will of God. And we surrender and submit to God’s Will and enter now into peace.
As-Salaam Alaikum.
Your Brother and Servant, The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Lost Found Nation of Islam in the West.
Two Enemies: COVID-19 & Racism’s Legacy
View From Here
By David Mark Greaves
We’ve been in a lot of tough spots as Africans in the Americas, with slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, criminal justice and the rest. But COVID-19 is taking us out suddenly and in mass. The virus strikes everybody, but it hits the Black community the hardest. By a wide margin. Back on April 8th The New York Times headline was, “Virus Is Twice as Deadly for Black and Latino People Than Whites in N.Y.C.”
And now we see that this is true across the country.
CNN reported on April 6, that in both Chicago and Louisiana, Black patients account for 70% of coronavirus deaths, while only 30% and 32% of the population.
It would surprise no one, if the yahoos protesting social-distancing edicts and demanding the country be “Opened up,” and “liberated” while waving their confederate flags and Trump-themed hats, think of COVID-19 as a cleansing of the country. Getting rid of the Black, Brown, homeless, and jailed populations. Anybody else is just collateral damage in a continuing racial war they are determined to win.
When President Donald Trump says some people said he should let the virus “wash over” the country, he was telling us what he thought. After all, given the demographics of the deaths, it is impossible for a man like Trump to see any downside to opening the country soonest; the earlier the better is okay with him. After all, the election is only six months away.
In an Atlantic article, conservative Republican George Conway wrote of Trump, “The question is whether he can possibly act as a public fiduciary for the nation’s highest public trust…Given that Trump displays the extreme behavioral characteristics of a pathological narcissist, a sociopath, or a malignant narcissist—take your pick—it’s clear that he can’t.” If you think that streak of evil is not possible, you haven’t been paying attention to American history or the president.
What are we to do?
On Wednesday, the director of the Center for Disease Control, Robert Redfield said to expect a “second wave” of the virus in the Fall, coinciding with the regular flu season, to be worse than what we are experiencing now. And at that point we will still be a year away from a vaccine. A year away from the anxiety of “what if,” a year away from any semblance of peace of mind.
In that time, there will be no church, crowded choirs singing and swaying while the congregation laughs, hugs and shake hands all around. There will be no more tables of six at after-service dinners in the church basement or family barbecues in the afternoon.
We will have to deal with this by taking control of what we can. Civic duty has never been more important than now. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Vote. Respond to the Census. Hold officials accountable to address the racial disparities of COVId-19. Let good health become our obsession. There is no more room for error. We are in this for the long haul.