$6.7M grant targets health equity.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 27 July 2012

Byline: Karen Nugent

WORCESTER - Being a white man practicing medicine in Alabama, Dr. Jeroan J. Allison, 50, figured southern racial struggles were mostly a thing of the past.

Until he began treating Arthur Shores, a black lawyer and prominent figure in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Dr. Allison, who made house calls to Mr. Shores' Birmingham, Ala., home to check on his hypertension, eventually became friends with him, and was accepted as part of the family - invited to gatherings where he would get the lowdown on how blacks thought about racism, the south and most importantly, medical care.

"Before, I thought everything was fine, that segregation was over," he said. "As things were disclosed, I realized I was wrong and that they had just assumed a different form - and that health disparity is a real problem."

In an effort to make a change, Dr. Allison embarked on a project in which "storytelling" with prerecorded videos made by actual patients, mainly blacks being treated for high blood pressure, were used to communicate their experiences to other patients.

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