Community Connection: Dr. Terri Richardson

Transcript:

TREE: KUVO JAZZ. Joining us today, Dr. Terri Richardson, co-founder of the Colorado Black Health Collaborative. Now, they recently released the 5th edition of the Black Health Resource Directory. It has been carefully curated for black Coloradans seeking culturally appropriate healthcare resources. Now the directory contains featured articles, fact sheets and resources focused on health well-being working together for our health. Good morning, Dr. Terri, thank you for being here on Community Connection.

TERRI: Good morning. How you doing?

TREE: I am well. Now, when and why did you decide to become a doctor?

TERRI: You know, I actually remember it was at my junior year in high school. I had a great teacher, Mr. T, that was teaching the Anatomy and Physiology class, and I thought, I think I want to be a doctor. I didn't know what it meant, but that was when I decided — my junior year at George Washington High School.

TREE: Oh, my goodness. Wow. George Washington, I went there too.

TERRI: Yes, George.

TREE: Yes, George is right. Now, how many doctors did you collaborate with the come up with the health resource directory?

TERRI: Actually, I would say zero doctors that we collaborated with, but we partnered with Connect for Health to get this resource directory done. And since I'm a doctor, even though I'm retired now, I know a lot of the people that are listed in the book, and so that was helpful to start out with. But it includes doctors as well as other traditional health providers as well as fitness and other holistic providers. It's all about the health and well-being of our community. So, we had some researchers that reached out to find out where these folks were. It was difficult, but it's worth it.

TREE: Amazing. But you've managed to get it all together now. This incredible directory. Incredible. Now, that's amazing. Now, are there other cities or states that offer a black health care collaborative?

TERRI: You know, that's a great question. To our knowledge, there isn't someone that has a resource directory like this one. It’s possible, but I know this is the only one here in Colorado, and actually our community asked for this type of directory back — I think it was in 2010 or so. The community said, “We need a resource that has some people that look like us, so will you all try to do this for us?” And we're like, “Okay, we will.”

We didn't really have any money. We had never done it before, but we knew it was important because the community was requesting this from us.

TREE: It was challenging, but you managed to make it happen.

TERRI: We made it happen.

TREE: And this is your 5th edition?

TERRI: This is the 5th edition. We're proud. Each addition we try to include more information. We try to do different things with each edition, and we are honoring our community with this. And we've, each time, tried to identify more providers and each type of provider that there is. There's doctors, there's dentists, there's fitness people, there’s maternal health specialists. So, there's a lot in here. There's also information about 20 or 22 organizations that cater to the black community around health.

TREE: Everybody needs health care and they just don't realize what they want, but this is really a great resource to go and find whatever you're looking for.

TERRI: Yes, almost everything is in there that you need.

TREE: It sounds like. Now, approximately how many people of color have skipped healthcare because of concerns of being treated unfairly?

TERRI: I don't think anybody has that actual number, but there have been some studies that have shown that there are black people that don't access healthcare because of discrimination that they face. We know that the majority of black people in Colorado have some type of health insurance, but when we go out into the shops with the Colorado Black Health Collaborative, we go out into barber shops and salons, and we talked to people about these kind of things.

And some will say, “Well, I have insurance, but I don't have a doctor.” Quite a few people just don't feel comfortable or don't trust the healthcare system, so they're reluctant to go in there. So, having some providers that look like them and we can tell them where those doctors are located is helpful.

TREE: That is nice. That is very nice to go into the shop. Well, you can find a lot of people at that barber shop and beauty shop. Gotta stay beautified.

TERRI: That's right. People go there more than they go to the doctor. We know this.

TREE: Isn't that amazing?

TERRI: Yes. And so we try to educate people in those spaces. We've delivered lots of the directories to the shops that we work with. We have about 14 shops, and I think we haven't made the rounds to all the shops. But I think at least about 10 of the shops that we work with have received these resource directories. We've also distributed at churches and to just, like, the lay public in general.

TREE: That is wonderful. Now about how many people do you think don't really have health care insurance?

TERRI: The numbers I've see, about 80 to 85% of the blacks in Colorado have health insurance, but do they use it? Not all the time. I don't know the percentage, but frequently in these shops we'll hear that, “Yes, I have health insurance, but no, I haven't been to the doctor.” But I can't give you an exact number. But I think, you know, given that people have insurance and they're not going, that's a little troublesome. That's troublesome. Some people just don't want to know what's going on with themselves. Some people have been there before. We've had calls saying, “Hey, this person wants somebody that looks like them because of their experiences in the healthcare system.” So, we try to help out. We encourage people still to go in, but we try to empower people: “Here are some questions you can ask if you're still having some issues, reach back to us and we'll try to help you through all these challenges.”

TREE: That's beautiful. What would you say is the leading cause of death in Colorado?

TERRI: The leading cause of death in Colorado…”

TREE: That affects people of color.

TERRI: That affects people of color. I mean, heart disease is one of the top ones for sure. And tied into that, I think stress and some habits that people have kind of contribute to that. We have high rates of high blood pressure. I have reviewed some of the state data over the past — I think the last report was put out in 2023 — and black people were at the top of every list when we talked about disease and death.

We have one of the lowest life expectancies for Colorado. Colorado's basically a healthy state, but we have the lowest life expectancy. We had higher death rates for lots of the different cancers, like breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer. So, we're really at the top of a lot of these lists, unfortunately. Even in a healthy state like Colorado, even with the health insurance, the numbers have improved over time as we've been in these shops and looked at the blood pressures. They've improved, but there's still gaps. We still are not at the best rate that we can be when it comes to control of high blood pressure or knowing that we have high blood pressure and doing something about it.

TREE: And the big part of that is, so a lot of people have White Coat Syndrome where they don't want to go to the doctor. As soon as they get there, their blood pressure spikes like crazy. Another thing that you said there was stress. They always say the doctor always tells you, “You need to get rid of your stress.” Well, my question is how do we do that?

TERRI: How do we get rid of the stress? That's one thing that's difficult. Stress can be related to not having enough money, having to work too many hours. And I think we just have to be more intentional about taking the time, even doing simple things like the 4-7-8 breathing. I'm like advising everyone do that now. We were in the shop a couple of weeks ago, and there are a few people whose blood pressure was high. I said, “Let's try the 4-7-8 breathing technique.” And they did that and their numbers dropped. It was like, wow. Incredible.

Because we've been teaching some operators — shop operators — about mental health conditions and giving them some tools, and that's one of the tools is a 4-7-8 breathing where you breathe in for four counts, hold your breath for seven counts, and breathe out for eight counts.

 And I was thinking, does this really work? That's why I wanted to try it at the shop, and it really does work. So, when you're having a very stressful day, I tell people to do mini meditation. Like, think of one sentence that you can roll through your brain for a short time. If you're on a job that doesn't let you take breaks, go to the bathroom, take a bathroom break, and do this mini meditation or do the 4-7-8 breathing. And that can help with your stress. We have to be intentional about trying to manage our stress. We can't always control what comes upon us. But you can try to manage your stress.

TREE: That's wonderful. So, tell us how we get a copy of the directory, because I'm sure there's many listeners who want to know. How do we get a copy of that?

TERRI: You know, we're happy to say that we had 4-5,000 hard copies and we've almost given out all of those, but we still do have some hard copies left. You can reach out to info@ColoradoBlackHealth.org to let us know that you'd like to get a hard copy. If you go to our website, ColoradoBlackHealth.org, we also have a link to the electronic version of the guide of the resource directory.

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