Black History Month Essay Contest, Black Health and Wellness
San Antonio College – Black History Month Program February 2022
We invite you to enter the Black History Month Essay Contest Deadline: February 19, 2022. Winners will receive- 1st Place: $500, 2nd Place: $400, 3rd Place: $300.
This year’s theme for Black History Month, “Black Health and Wellness”, takes a look at how American healthcare has often underserved the African-American community.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has recently shown, a widespread disparity of access to quality healthcare negatively impacted outcomes for blacks and other minorities.
For African-Americans, the root of the problem goes deep, and back centuries. Beginning with slavery and, later, a lack of economic opportunity, often put medical care out of reach for many African-Americans.
Even in good economic times, during the Jim Crow era “Whites Only” hospitals were commonplace throughout the South. Black medical facilities were often understaffed, underfunded, or non-existent. This stark reality gave credence to the saying: “When white folks catch a cold, black folks get pneumonia.”
Black folk remedies helped pick up the slack. They sometimes called for rituals and incantations, harking back to its African roots, and often involved many plant-based curatives. These included garlic for high blood pressure, and aloe vera for skin injuries — nature’s answers to maintaining wellness that have since been validated by modern medicine.
It was only well into the 20th century when the US government threatened to withhold Medicare payments to ‘Whites Only” medical institutions. And, almost overnight, hospitals became desegregated. The year was 1964 — when the passage of the Civil Rights Act finally gave Black America a better shot at institutional health care.
More than 40 years later, following years of negotiations with the health insurance industry, the Affordable Care Act was eventually passed by the Obama administration that gave better access to medical care for Americans of every color.
Today, (almost unbelievably for a rich industrialized nation), the US continues to lag woefully behind the rest of the world in providing affordable medical care for most of its citizens. And African-Americans, other minorities, and especially the poor, continue to remain the most vulnerable.
The Black History Month Committee PREFERS participants:
Arrange for at least ONE tutoring session at the SAC Writing Center prior to turning in the essay (make an appointment); OR seek the assistance of one of our librarians through an individualized library session here: http://sacguide.libguides.com/bookalib to ensure high-quality research is the foundation of the submission; Submit as a word file (.doc or. docx) to Jane Focht-Hansen ( jfocht-hansen@alamo.edu ) by 5 pm Saturday February 19, 2022.
For additional information please call (210) 486-0590 or visit https://www.alamo.edu/sac/calendar/2022/february/black-history-month/ for full entry instructions.
