Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Arthur Ashe institute for Urban Health
Back at one of the settings where I was a health advocate: SUNY Downstate Campus! We’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health (AAIUH). It’s still educating communities in Brooklyn.
The great tennis player Arthur Ashe was the only African-American male to ever to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. After he retired in 1980, Ashe continued his efforts towards civil rights, and fighting against heart disease and AIDS. He founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health (AAIUH) on the SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University Campus in Brooklyn, just two months before his death in 1993.
I worked with AAIUH to coach hundreds of stylists and barbers throughout Brooklyn to spread the word to their clients about breast and prostate cancers with the “Soul Sense of Beauty” and “Fades of Health” programs. I also contributed to an article about our beauty and barber shop study in the Journal of the National Medical Association: “Barbers as lay health advocates—developing a prostate cancer curriculum”. I’m so grateful to have played a part in this important program!
The beauty shop program is now called “Heart of a Woman” and the barbershop program is “Barbershop Talk with Brothers”.
AAIUH has done amazing things over these three decades to improve our community’s public health. Check out the many programs at AAIUH, from teens to adults! Congratulations! https://www.arthurasheinstitute.org
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