At Reunions, a Turn for the Healthier

To Reduce Risks, Some Black Families Trade Soul Food for Yoga and Veggies

Some guests at the annual Brown-Carter family reunion on Labor Day weekend plan to bring barbecued chicken or a cooler of sweet tea. Pat Lane is packing something else entirely: a jar of nicotine tar, dark and thick as molasses -- essentially the same consistency it has in smokers' lungs.

Lane, a registered nurse and stroke program management coordinator at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, isn't out to spoil the Oxon Hill event, just to send a not-so-subtle message to her relatives: Take care of your health. And don't smoke.

She says there's no better place to spread the word than at the family's yearly gathering. "You've got a captive audience," she says. "It's the perfect time to send positive health messages, be a role model, educate."

Many agree. Particularly among African Americans, disease prevention is occupying a growing place at family gatherings, say many in the reunion industry. Increasingly, they say, common features of these events include not just lighter fare and more fitness-related activities like family yoga or hiking but -- as efforts grow to reduce racial health disparities -- disease screenings, family medical tree projects and health-themed displays and talks.

"In families where there are people working in the medical field, you certainly see them bringing health to the table more and more," says Edith Wagner, editor of Milwaukee-based Reunions magazine.

Some of the nation's leading health agencies and health advocacy groups are behind the trend.

Since launching its Family Reunion Initiative in 2006, aimed at educating African Americans about their risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has distributed more than 27,000 copies of its Family Reunion Health Guide. The booklet offers three approaches to sharing disease prevention tactics at a family gathering. The Web site for the National Institutes of Health program has logged 25,000 downloads.

In July the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, issued a "Power to End Stroke" family reunion tool kit also aimed at black families.

TV figures such as Oprah Winfrey and sports celebrities such as NBA Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins, 47, are similarly on board. Wilkins, who has diabetes and a family history of high blood pressure, says he plugs healthy eating and exercise at his extended family get-togethers.

"My family loves soul food, but it's not always good for you," says Wilkins, who has crisscrossed the country this year to promote awareness of hypertension and the risk it poses to kidney and heart function. He says reunions are a key place to share medical information.

Personal family experience is the only motivation some people say they need.

Potomac lawyer Denise Rowe, 48, says awareness of her father's and sister's diabetes led her to push for changes at her family's three-day reunion in July in Alexandria. In response to her request, the committee organizing the Jackson family reunion lightened up the usual meat-heavy menu and added more fitness activities, including golf, cycling and a black-history-themed walk.

Rowe's favorite event came Saturday afternoon. A yoga buff, she told the 20 or so relatives who gathered to plan next year's reunion that there would be a pre-meeting yoga session.

"They were like, 'You gotta be kidding,' " Rowe says, chuckling. "But my rocket scientist cousin Robbie, a total jock, ended up being a yoga convert. So did my husband, who tried it for the first time." Even her 68-year-old uncle, who had pedaled 20 miles on the family cycling excursion that morning, got into the spirit of the activity, Rowe says.

"It was a far cry from Jackson reunions a decade ago, when people spent a lot of time eating roast beef and pie and lounging around the pool," she said.

A Worrisome Gap

Recent medical research has shown wide health disparities between blacks and whites in the United States.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the death rate from heart disease among African Americans (406 per 100,000) is 36 percent higher than that for whites (299 per 100,000); African Americans' death rate from stroke (74 per 100,000) is 45 percent higher than that for whites (51 per 100,000).

African Americans have higher rates of hypertension and diabetes. Because those are the leading causes of kidney disease, African Americans are at two to four times the risk for that disease as are whites, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

HIV infection rates and HIV death rates among blacks are 10 times that of whites, according to the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

"Unfortunately, in 21st-century America, health care is still not universally accessible to those who need it most," says Wallace Johnson Jr., an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Johnson specializes in cardiovascular health in African Americans.

Some hope more health talk at family reunions will encourage more regular doctors' visits and point those without health insurance to free or low-cost resources (screenings, Web sites, clinics, clinical trials) they may not have known about; it may also lead them to seek help from a family member in the medical profession. Also, broaching the discussion in a safe environment is not an insignificant factor, says John Ruffin, director of the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, a unit of the National Institutes of Health, given that "the legacy of the Tuskegee experiment still haunts many African Americans."

That U.S. Public Health Service study -- beginning in 1932, it withheld diagnosis and treatment from 399 black men with syphilis, more than 100 of whom died of the disease or its complications -- is often cited as the basis for many African Americans' distrust of the medical system and the government in general.

Lane says a recent Inova Fairfax Hospital conference on racial health disparities inspired her to use her family reunion to teach about disease prevention and counsel patients to do the same. At her reunions, Lane dishes with kin about tasty low-fat recipes and talks with younger relatives about peer pressure to take drugs and engage in risky sexual behavior and violence. The jar of cigarette tar also enters the picture. When she showed it to family members at last year's reunion, Lane says, "they thought it was gross, but it got their attention."

In July, at the Franks family reunion in Howard County, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents were welcomed with a "For Your Health" display. Claire Wilson, a business consultant from the District, says the display focused on the risks of diabetes, hypertension and smoking -- topics she had covered in three recent family newsletters. "The smoking one was particularly sensitive. My great-grandfather was a tobacco farmer and had thousands of acres of tobacco. We've had quite a few family members who have died of lung cancer."

Wilson described the effort -- a family first -- as a wild success. By weekend's end, guests had snatched up hundreds of brochures donated by the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association and State Farm Insurance, sponsor of the 50 Million Pound Challenge, a national weight-loss campaign for African Americans. Since the reunion, Wilson says, relatives have been clamoring for more health information in the next installment of the newsletter.

Learning From Elders

Reunion menus have undergone a marked change, too, in recent years, according to Thomas and Carol Vest, owners of Catering by Vest in Temple Hills. Thomas Vest says being diagnosed with diabetes 15 years ago led him to shed more than 160 pounds and help others curb their intake of fat, salt and sugar.

"Some of my clients say they want soul food. I suggest, 'Make it food for the soul' instead," says Vest, who uses dry barbecue rubs and relies on loads of herbs and spices to satisfy customers' taste buds. But he says some folks bristle when he suggests swapping out fried chicken for grilled or roasted versions.

Terry Robinson, a human resources manager from Upper Marlboro, is not one of them. "Family members who are vegetarians and those with chronic illnesses appreciate the updated food options," she says. In July, the Robinsons chowed down on Vest's vegetarian baked beans, low-fat beef burgers and chicken dogs, veggie burgers and piles of fresh fruit at their Saturday picnic in Greenbelt. "And this is a Southern family raised on greens cooked with fatbacks," the Alabama native says.

Some say the sharing of health histories at reunions has encouraged them to make lifestyle changes and get screened earlier for diseases that dogged their parents and grandparents.

Seketha Mosley, a wedding specialist from Waldorf, says that when her family held a reunion a few years ago in southern Virginia shortly after her father's death from heart disease, the event turned into a medical history jam session. The stories her relatives told about their illnesses and their parents' illnesses led her to undergo a massive weight-loss effort. Previously 363 pounds, she now weighs 170.

"I didn't want to end up with diabetes and heart disease like so many of our older relatives," Mosley says. "I left the reunion ready to make a change, and I have."

Mary Brophy Marcus often writes on health topics. Comments:health@washpost.com.