Clipping Away at Illness

"The average guy will not go to the doctor unless he's bleeding or in an ambulance," said Virgil Simons of Hackensack, N.J., who launched a program in 2004 called Going to the Barbershop to Fight Cancer. "You need some kind of stimulus to get them there, and barbers are a great vehicle to motivate them."

Barbershops and beauty salons are one place where African Americans meet across socioeconomic lines.

They arose as hubs after the Civil War, when barbershops were among the few businesses that Southern black men could own. During the civil rights era, the shops were used for political gatherings. Beauty salons, in turn, became places where women could exercise their economic independence.

Today, they remain nerve centers where gossip is traded and racial politics is dissected, said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, author of "Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought" and an associate professor at Princeton University.

A survey by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that 80 percent of African Americans visit a barbershop or salon at least once a month. Women typically stay 2 1/2 to three hours, and men stay only a little less.

Another UNC study found that nearly one in five conversations in hair salons is already health-related. The trick is to teach barbers and stylists how to weave health messages into those chats, study leader Laura Linnan said.

The idea to marry health care and hair styling arose in Towson, Md., in the early 1980s, when University of Maryland doctors began checking blood pressure in churches but sought to capture a wider audience. In recent years, the programs have proliferated.

The Baltimore County Health Department has hosted Bowling With the Barbers, giving them flu shots and blood pressure checks and hoping they will recruit some of their customers to do the same. The Montgomery County Health Department sponsors the African American Health Program, which sends health professionals to monitor clients in one barbershop and two churches. The Virginia Department of Health has recruited hairdressers in Richmond as "health ambassadors" to root out oral cancer.

Farther from Washington, forums have been held in barbershops in Boston, where nutritionists served healthy dinners, and in Syracuse, N.Y., where nurses talked with cancer survivors. In Detroit, a program co-sponsored by the Michigan chapter of the National Kidney Foundation since 1999 has enlisted more than 800 stylists.

Simons, of Hackensack, has spread his Going to the Barbershop to Fight Cancer program to 22 states, including two barbershops in the District and six in Maryland. Barbers host evening discussions with doctors, and clients receive coupons for free prostate screenings. The program has led to 30,000 screenings, he said.

And in Pittsburgh, the Center for Minority Health sponsors an annual Take a Professional to the People Day, in which psychologists, nurses and nutritionists take bicycle tours of black neighborhoods "so they can see why a parent might not let a child come out and play, or see the liquor stores, the five-and-dime stores selling only high-calorie foods" and understand the dearth of lifestyle choices there, Thomas said.

He expressed concern that some patients might come to rely on "second-class care" from people who are not trained doctors, but he said inviting medical professionals into the shops can have an impact.

"Our vision is, in the future, you can walk into a barbershop and do tele-medicine," he said.

Sandra Gilbert, 55, didn't know she was in for a guilt trip when she walked into Arnica Ford's Divine Transformation salon for a "sexy new look" one recent afternoon.

"What'll it be today, Miss Sandra?" Ford asked, running her fingers through Gilbert's tresses. Then, as she combed a relaxer through them, the beautician leaned over and, almost whispering, asked Gilbert when she last had her blood pressure checked.

"I have been slothful," replied the retired Verizon employee, a borderline diabetic.

With gospel music humming in the background and her hair newly fluffed into a cap of curls, she let Ford strap on the pressure cuff.

It was, Gilbert said, laughing, a "one-stop shop."