GREENVILLE, SC--International poet and best-selling author Maya Angelou quietly picked up the central theme of 2012 Minority Health Summit on Saturday that health and education are directly linked.
Angelou said that the 5,000 people attending the summit — mostly blacks and Hispanics — are positioned to close the gap in health disparities between themselves and the general population.
“I want to remind you of how powerful you are,” she said at the Bi-Lo Center in downtown Greenville. “Groups who point out the disparities are rainbows in the sky.”
Those disparities, mixed with unhealthy diets and lifestyle, can lead to premature death, experts said.
Speakers for the summit’s sponsors, Greenville Hospital System and Bi-Lo, said that one’s eating habits are linked to being overweight or obese, and that obesity almost always leads to diabetes and heart disease.
The central message was that everyone can get healthier simply by eating more vegetables and fruits, and exercising daily.
Angelou, 84, was seated and physically frail, but her star power was evident in her voice during her 45-minute talk. She recalled simple yet powerful stories her physically handicapped Uncle Willie told when she was a child, stories of beating the odds.
She used the stories as a springboard to explain that even if someone is having the most dreadful day, by simply speaking to a person, whether you know the person or not, can pump up that person spiritually.
“It means your light will shine on people you’ll never know,” said Angelou, who hasn’t lost a step as a sage and story teller.
Monica Amburn, a Bi-Lo corporate registered dietitian who spoke before Angelou, made everyone promise they “would eat more meals at home and move (exercise) more.”
Eating at home helps control ingredients and portion size, she said.
She was able to drive home her themes with a series of slides.
One showed a picture of the small size of hamburger in 1970s and its much larger, calorie-and-fat-filled version in 2000. It was hard to miss the larger bun and thicker patty of ground beef.
“Eating is the first step to leading a healthy life,” Amburn said.
She also illustrated the difference in dinner habits now compared to 30 years ago by showing photographs of popular eateries like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Applebee’s and IHOP.
Two other speakers, Debra Joy Perez of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Dr. Thaddeus J. Bell, both said that the obesity rate, now amounting to about a third of all Americans and higher for blacks and Hispanics, will continue to increase unless people adopt healthier eating habits.
Obesity is strongly linked to diabetes and results in shorter and less active lives.
People living in poverty are more at risk because they lack access to fresh foods and information.
Bell, an annual summit speaker, spoke about an issue many Upstate residents rarely talk about, how bis*xual men contribute to more black and Hispanic women becoming HIV positive and contracting AIDS.
Like Angelou, Perez underscored the day’s theme for the audience. “There’s a strong correlation between health, education and longer lives,” she said.
Parents who have less than a high school education give their children only a 6 percent chance of attending college.
Meanwhile, those who attend college give their offspring a 73 percent probability of a college education.
Angelou, fluent in six languages, gave the attendees some parting wisdom by making certain they “see the rainbows in the clouds.”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Monday, April 16th 2012 at 11:02AM
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