Community Link: Indiana Minority Health

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — On this week’s Community Link, we are discussing Indiana’s Department of Health and how they’re improving the racial and ethnic health disparities across the state with Director of Minority Health for the State of Indiana Antoinette Holt. 

Tell us about the gaps of health services some in the minority communities experience.

So right now we know that racial ethnic minorities experience almost two to three times more prevalent rates of chronic disease or even mortality depending upon what disease we’re looking at as far as our population here of Hoosiers I know that 18% or more of Indiana is made up of ethnic minorities and so for 18 percent of the population to experience that much disparities, something must be done. 

So some of the things that we do in addressing those disparities is addressing our partnership with such agencies as Indiana minority health coalition or the minority health initiative that the state has statued…or different things that they have to make sure that all Hoosiers are taken care of and address as far as our concerns their issues.

What are some of the services that you provide?

Some of the things that we do is, we don’t do direct services necessarily. But we do programs and projects were we partner so the mhi as I mentioned is a statutory agreement that we have in the state that allows us to give money to agencies such as the Indiana minority health coalition where they go out to the public and so people can get services, people can learn about the diseases that are prevalent within their communities and they get the communities involved because it’s not just us telling what to do but we gotta make sure of what works in these communities. and then we do different programs to address issues such as infant mortality, which is really high among the African-American and Latinos specially, or even the smoking rate or even looking at their nutrition and physical activity.

So you have a big health fair coming up. Tell us about that.

So the Indiana Black Minority Health Fair is in its 33rd year and it’s going to be at the Convention Center in hall f this year. Our theme this year is invest in your health and so we’re going to offer over $2,000 worth of free health screenings that we will provide for those people to take advantage of it. So everything from glucose to cholesterol full panel byt he way, a1c, prostate screening, you name it, we will pretty much have it there.

So it’s open and free for the public. Are there bilingual services that will be provided?

There will be bilingual services provided and yes it’s free and open to the public, so we’re inviting everyone from the oldest to the youngest. Everybody is welcome to come.