Dr. LaPrincess Brewer is passionate about addressing cardiovascular health disparities, especially in her own community.
“African Americans are more likely to die prematurely from heart disease,” said Brewer, cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic Department of Cardiovascular Medicine. “One in two African Americans have some cardiovascular disease … African Americans also have a higher burden of cardiovascular risk factors that are uncontrolled: hypertension, diabetes and obesity.”
But Brewer’s passion for promoting heart health in the Black community didn’t begin in medical school. Brewer, who grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the impetus for her work came from seeing members of the congregation pass away at the church she grew up attending.
“There were several members of our congregation that passed away prematurely from uncontrolled risk factors,” Brewer said. “I’ve carried that with me, because these people were like family and relatives to me. Now I’m back at the Black church, really promoting heart health.”
In 2008, Brewer began the Fostering African American Total Health program, or the FAITH! program, in Baltimore. The program, which focuses on community research and intervention, moved with her to Minnesota in 2013. From the beginning, FAITH! has worked alongside church leaders to conduct research that involves and benefits the Black community.
For Brewer, partnering with church leaders is part of a long tradition of the Black church promoting health and wellness.
“Black churches have always been at the forefront of health promotion in the Black community,” Brewer said. “(The Black church) is the pillar of the Black community in terms of social, political, health messaging.”
Brewer also pointed to historical health ministries in Black churches.
“Traditionally they’ve been led by nurses,” Brewer said. “They tend to have health promotion activities after church, so they do blood pressure checks and glucose checks and also have programs within the community to promote heart health and wellness.”
Recently, Brewer and her team organized a kick-off event for a new community research study, Techquity by FAITH!. In this study members of Black churches in Rochester and the Twin Cities will use the FAITH! mobile app, where they will have access to “modules on key cardiovascular risk factors” like blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose. There will also be a module in the app dealing with stressors specific to the Black community, such as racism and structural inequalities. Participants will note their fruit and vegetable intake on the app and will be provided with a FitBit to track their physical activity.
One group of participants in the study will have access to the app and the fitbit, while another group will have access to the app, the Fitbit, and help from members of the community trained as Digital Health Advocates. These advocates will promote heart health and help increase participants’ digital literacy by teaching them how to use the app’s technology to its full potential.
This study follows past research by FAITH! that indicated that the app was feasible in reaching out to community members. Some of them, according to Brewer, used the app’s social networking feed to connect and meet up in person for healthy activities or to share healthy recipes. But this time, there’s a new component to the research, improving participants’ ability to use technology through the Digital Health Advocates. Brewer explained that this promotes “techquity,” which she described as “a means to achieve equity and access” to digital tools.
“While African Americans are more likely to have access to smartphones, they’re less likely to have their own personal computers and access to the Internet,” Brewer said.
“This was unfortunately unveiled during the COVID-19 pandemic when we had this rapid transformation towards digital technologies, particularly for health care access, for telehealth … Many racial and ethnic minority groups, particularly African Americans, just didn’t have access to health care providers to take care of themselves during the pandemic, and now we’re seeing the repercussions of that because many of their heart disease risk factors have been uncontrolled throughout the pandemic.”
For Shirley Land, First Lady of the St. Albans Church of God in Christ in St. Paul, participating in FAITH!’s past research led to not just using the mobile app, but making changes in the church itself.
“Since meeting (Brewer) and getting involved with FAITH!, we have now established our own health ministry,” said Land, who also said that being more conscious of the congregation’s health led to changes in the after church menu.
“We don’t have all the fried chicken and all the macaroni and cheese – the high fat food that we normally would have,” Land said, adding that she believes this change led to similar diet changes in parishioners’ homes.
As Fitbits and healthy recipe books were raffled out to attendees after the study objectives were presented, Brewer stressed the importance of community. “No one will always show up for us,” she said. “We have to show up for us.”
Deanna Pistono
Deanna Pistono is MinnPost’s Race & Health Equity fellow. Follow her on Twitter @deannapistono or email her at dpistono@minnpost.com.
