Servant Leader: Deacon Brian Cody

The Cornerstone Health Ministry provides information and programs supporting healthy living for the church and for the community. We promote healthy living strategies by hosting community health events, offering healthy cooking classes, and providing healthy meals and recipes to the congregation several times per year.

The mission of the Cornerstone Health Ministry is to address health challenges such as High Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Cancer, and Diabetes, by providing education and opportunities to achieve optimum health.

Our signature event is the annual community gathering “Health is a Family Affair” which is jointly sponsored by Cornerstone MBC and St John MBC Health Ministries (a community of health ministries) and seeks to engage our Bayview community with the life-enabling organizations of the San Francisco peninsula.

NOVEMBER 2024 HEALTH TIP:
How to honor a family caregiver during National Family Caregivers Month

Caregiving happens. And everyone's experience with caregiving is unique, whether you're the one caring for a loved one, or you're on the receiving end.

Caregiving also means #CaregivingAroundtheClock, working tirelessly to keep older loved ones in their homes for as long as possible and missed sleep because of hands-on care. We hope you'll spread the love and show your support for a family caregiver by posting to your social media profile using the images we've curated for you here . . . How to Honor Caregivers During November

OCTOBER 2024 HEALTH TIP:
Original article: https://www.komen.org/breast-cancer/risk-factor/alcohol-consumption/
Komen perspective: https://www.komen.org/blog/komen-perspectives-drinking-alcohol-in-moderation-is-the-glass-half-full-or-half-empty/

SEPTEMBER 2024 HEALTH TIP:
https://www.scaasf.org/
2024 Update
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/resources/sickle-cell-disease-milestones-research-and-clinical-progress-booklet

BAYVIEW HEALTH

Dr Kimberly Rhoads, MD, MPH, is currently the founder and Director of Umoja Health, a community run COVID-19 testing and vaccination initiative where all services are provided by the community partners in Oakland, and serves as the Associate Director for Community Engagement at the UCSF Cancer Center.

This interview was done in April 2024 during the Health Ministry’s focus on Minority Health and Disparities.

Q: Now that we’re past COVID, where does the Bayview stand in terms of health disparities?

Dr Rhoads: There are long standing disparities in cancer incidence: the number of people getting and surviving, length of survival, whether or not they have recurrent cancers after treatment, and obviously getting other cancers and passing away. Those disparities have been ongoing for a long time and for the most part, they are not narrowing. There are a couple of cancers – prostate cancer being one of them – where the gap between black and white survival has over the last decade has actually narrowed a bit. But some disparities are getting wider.

Whenever there’s new technology, you can expect the disparities will get wider. Imagine the underserved populations are on a steady [survival] trajectory, but then a new technology enters the cancer space. Some people get the technology, the underserved don’t. Their trajectory stays the same, but because more [populations] are surviving the gap of survival widens. If your regular hospital doesn’t provide high level cancer care, when the innovation comes, your hospital won’t have it. People cluster in the types of hospitals where they’re comfortable, where they know ‘that’s my hospital’. My hospital might do great trauma care, and if I get hit by a car, I want to go to that hospital, but if I have a diagnosis of cancer, I really want to be in a place that does a lot of cancer care because that’s where all the innovations are going to show up. The cancer treatment innovations are not going to show up in the trauma hospital. It’s not that the people don’t care, it’s just that they can only work with what they have.

CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE AND OUTCOMES

Dr Rhoads: Heart failure is a big one, because it requires a lot of medications to be taken in a timely fashion and in combinations that can be complicated to manage. When the heart fails, unfortunately, it also harms other organs, in particular, the kidneys. So folks with kidney failure, on dialysis, as you’re following that pathway, what do you do when your kidneys fail? Well, you want to get signed up for a kidney transplant. We know there are disparities in kidney transplantation and who gets a kidney.

Also in the cardiovascular space, is high blood pressure (HBP) which also impacts the kidneys. And we know that high blood pressure has been a problem for African American communities since . . . well when has it not been a problem? The challenge is that HBP doesn’t hurt or give any indication of its presence until the damage it’s causing becomes a real problem like the kidneys don’t function. The body is resilient and it has different mechanisms to compensate for what’s going wrong.

Healthy kidneys filter about a half cup of blood every minute, removing wastes and extra water to make urine. If your kidneys’ blood vessels are damaged, the kidneys are not able to remove all wastes and extra fluid from your body. [1]

So when you get to the point where [the kidneys] can no longer [function] under the circumstances, you start to experience small volumes of very dark urine.

I’m going to put diabetes in the cardiovascular category because it also damages the blood vessels. The high levels of circulating blood sugar act like Velcro and start to stick to other things like cholesterol globules which block off the blood vessel and that in turn can harm the kidneys. Diabetes can also cause a heart attack, or contribute to a stroke.

So the combination of high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol -- that’s the triple threat. Any two of these together are bad, but the three of them together are the worst.

STRESS

Dr. Rhoads: There have been, again, long-standing disparities due to -- I don’t want to call it lifestyle because that suggests that ‘oh you did it to yourself’ -- it’s more about access. How many jobs are you working? How much sleep are you getting? Each of these things contribute to circulating hormones in your body (cortisol specifically) that actually worsen diabetes, high blood pressure, not so much cholesterol levels. And again, not talking about the choices that you make, but the options that are present and available to you. Access to fresh vegetables, walkable space, free time, and the ability to rest -- opportunities to reduce stress. It’s the whole string of things, that in my mind, really relates to how people live their lives.

If you’re keyed up, your cortisol is probably up. Cortisol is a steroid that makes you release sugar because you’re going to need it for energy – the fight or flight response -- and it also increases the amount of salt retention. And wherever there’s salt, water follows salt. So I’m not talking about eating salt, I’m talking about the sodium content in your body already, the cortisol will mess with that salt concentration and that can have impact on blood pressure as well. Reducing stress reduces cortisol, which reduces circulating sugar, reduces blood pressure, and then you can protect your kidneys.

So another kind of upstream driver is smoking and exposure to cigarette smoke. ‘Tobacco cessation’ partners well with ‘stress reduction activities’. A lot of people smoke because they’re stressed, unfortunately, when you smoke it makes your blood vessels constrict right away. And blood pressure is related to how flexible are your blood vessels, and how much blood is rushing through. If I just smoked a cigarette right now, my blood vessels would tighten, my blood pressure for the next 24 hours would actually be increased compared to if I hadn't smoked a cigarette. Smoking also goes to multiple, multiple cancers in terms of increasing risk and with cessation-reducing risk. It’s not just lung cancer, it’s also bladder cancer, it's also pancreas cancer, it’s also stomach cancer. With colorectal cancer, there’s a correlation.

There’s also reducing red meat intake. That doesn’t mean ‘don’t eat red meat’; it just means don’t-eat-red-meat-every-time-you-eat-meat. I know Dr. Ka’Ryn Jackson is part of your congregation now, so I’m sure she’s going to be advancing plant-based diets.

These are big chunks of messages that can be pushed out that promote a healthy congregation.

The Cornerstone Health Ministry works to undo these disparities with information, health screenings, exercise and peer-support activities. [end of article]

[1] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/kidney-disease/high-blood-pressure#:~:text=High%20blood%20pressure%20can%20constrict,may%20no%20longer%20work%20properly accessed 5/28/2024

JUNE 2024 HEALTH TIP
https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/mens-health-month-2024

MAY 2024 HEALTH TIP
Health Care & Caregiver Month

May is also Mental Health Month (see video below)

APRIL 2024 HEALTH TIP

Minority Health and Health Equity

MARCH 2024 HEALTH TIP
Colorectal Health

FEBRUARY 2024 HEALTH TIP

Clicking the image below will take you to the CDC’s site

DECEMBER HEALTH TIP

Gratitude Quotes Inspirational Quotes

NOVEMBER HEALTH TIP

American Diabetes Awareness Month > click image below for Healthy Eating Tips

OCTOBER HEALTH TIP
Coming October 14 10-1:30pm Health Fair!

Let’s Talk About Mental Health

SEPTEMBER HEALTH TIP

AUGUST HEALTH TIP

National Night Out is an annual community-building campaign that promotes community partnerships and neighborhood comradery with the goal of creating safer and stronger neighborhoods.
View the events calendar for your district station for details

JULY HEALTH TIP

July is Parks and Recreation Month

With summer here it’s time to get out and enjoy some recreation.
Here are the 10 best parks in 94124: https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=parks&find_loc=94124 or click on the image below