article by Aria Ellise via blackamericaweb.com
Angela Bassett has been acting for over three decades, but one thing is constant: she looks great while doing it. From her body to her skin, the wife and mother are always looking fresh in her films and appearances. But behind the scenes, Bassett struggled with skin issues.
So, the actress has teamed up with Dr. Barbara Sturm, her friend and a well-known skincare expert, to launch a skin-care line that addresses the specific needs of women with darker complexions.
Bassett has struggled with skin issues herself, she told WWD. Initially, she used Sturm’s original line to treat her breakouts and irritations, but she realized it didn’t address skin issues that darker women deal with, such as hyperpigmentation. That’s when they decided to extend the line and after two years of research, Darker Skin Tones by Dr. Barbara Sturm came into reality.
Hyperpigmentation is characterized by a darkening of an area of skin caused by the overproduction of a pigment in the skin known as melanin.
Hyperpigmentation is the result of either of two occurrences: an abnormally high concentration of melanocytes produce melanin or when melanocytes are hyperactive. For instance, sun exposure stimulates the production of melanin. Although it can affect anyone, this condition is more prevalent among African-Americans and those of Latin descent.
Hyperpigmentation can affect any part of the body including the face, hands, and neck.
Bassett said that she wants to bring more awareness to skin care and for people, “to see what is good for it and ingredients that are helpful — not invasive or irritating. I like them to be pleased when they look in the mirror, to feel good about themselves and the condition of their complexion.”
Posts published in “Health & Fitness”
article via newsone.com
A Michigan man who was nearly killed in a 2007 shooting graduated last week to become a surgeon, much like the one who saved him after the random robbery that almost took his life.
It was Dr. Dharti Sheth-Zelmanski who was in the trauma unit when then-college student Kevin Morton Jr. was brought in with a gunshot wound to the stomach. And Sheth-Zelmanski was there again when the now 31-year-old graduated from Michigan State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, NBCreports.
Morton’s story is full circle; nine years ago, doctors at Detroit’s St. John Hospital weren’t sure the then 22-year-old would make it. The Oakland University of Rochester student, who was closing up after a night shift at a local Arby’s, was shot by a gunman who attempted to rob him as he was getting into his vehicle. Doctors said the young student had a 10 percent chance of surviving through the night, the report said:
Sheth-Zelmanski got a call for a Code 1 trauma patient that night. Doctors prepared Morton’s family for the worst.
“Whether we call it intuition, experience or a miracle … we put some extra sutures in and the bleeding stopped,” Sheth-Zelmanski recalled.
Morton’s life was saved. He had plans to graduate from school and go into the pharmaceuticals industry, but that all changed when doctors at St. John Hospital gave him another chance. He spent 50 days recovering there.
What’s more, Morton will begin his residency at the same hospital where he was saved.
“The compassion and drive that Dr. Sheth has shown in trying to save my life … I just wanna pay that forward,” Morton told NBC News.
SOURCE: NBC | VIDEO SOURCE: Inform
article by Breanna Edwards via theroot.com
A Forest, Va., fifth-grader got the chance to see his mother clearly for the first time ever through the use of new electronic glasses, ABC News reports.
A Forest, Va., fifth-grader got the chance to see his mother clearly for the first time ever through the use of new electronic glasses, ABC News reports.
Thanks to the new wearable technology called eSight, Christopher Ward Jr. was able to “really see for the first time in his 12 years of life,” his mother told the news station.
“The very first thing he did was turn to me and say, ‘Oh, Mommy! There you are!” Christopher’s mom, Marquita Hackley, told ABC News today. “And then to hear him say, ‘I saw my mom, and she was very pretty,’ was so heartwarming. And aside from pretty, just the fact he could even see me meant the whole world to me.”
ESight uses a small, high-speed camera that captures live video, which is then sent to a LED screen in front of the user’s eyes, the network notes.
Christopher was born with optic nerve hypoplasia, which means his optic nerve never fully developed before he was born. As a result, he “only has little light perception in his left eye and very, very low vision in his right eye,” Hackley explained.
“Something has to be up in his face, almost touching, for him to see it,” she said. “And even though [he] wears glasses on a daily basis, they’re more for protection than vision because there is a strong possibility he could lose the little sight he does have if he were to get hurt or hit on the face.”
Hackley’s insurance didn’t cover the cost of eSight, so she created a crowdfunding page on the YouCaring site, asking for $15,000 to purchase the technology. Once the community got wind of her need, the story went viral and donations started pouring in. The donation page, which is now closed, raised over $25,000. Hackley noted that all the money over the cost of the glasses would be put into a trust for her son.
“Christopher is just a very loving kid, always happy, and never complains about anything,” she said. “I’ll do anything to help get him what he deserves.”
Read more at ABC News.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
New Haven, Conn.—A screening of the documentary film “Black Women in Medicine” by producer/director Crystal Emery will take place on Tuesday, April 26 at 4 p.m. at the Yale School of Medicine’s Anlyan Center (TAC), Rm. N107, 300 Cedar St.
“Black Women in Medicine” chronicles the unsung journeys of black women doctors who have risen above inequality to excellence while becoming leaders in their fields.
The event will feature a reception and book signing for “Against all Odds: Celebrating Black Women in Medicine.” Yale School of Medicine Dean Robert Alpern, New Haven Mayor Toni Harp, and Yale School of Medicine Professor and Interim Chair of Internal Medicine Gary Desir, will deliver opening remarks. Registration is encouraged.
Click through below to see the trailer on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/153400553
The event is an initiative of URU The Right to Be Inc., in collaboration with The Minority Organization for Retention & Expansion (MORE), the Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine (SWIM), the Office of Women in Medicine, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Guests can attend one of two breakout workshops, titled “Changing the Face of Medicine: From Conversation to Action” and “Retention and Recruitment.”
article by Angela Bronner Helm via theroot.com
Morris Brown College, which has in recent years fallen on some hard times, seems to be back on the mend with a three-year, $900,000 grant to stem HIV/AIDS infections among young black adults, reports HBCU Digest.
Morris Brown College, which has in recent years fallen on some hard times, seems to be back on the mend with a three-year, $900,000 grant to stem HIV/AIDS infections among young black adults, reports HBCU Digest.
The site reports that this is the second such award for the college in the last two years and the money will be used to launch seminar-styled education sessions on campus, with a focus on substance abuse prevention among college-age youth to prevent risky sexual behaviors.
The grant is reportedly part of a national initiative launched by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration targeting HBCUs as service delivery partners in vulnerable areas.
Morris Brown, founded in 1816 as one of only a few historically black colleges and universities founded by African Americans, has served as a lead institution in the program since 2014 to help improve public health outcomes among youth in Fulton and Dekalb Counties.
Greater Atlanta has alarming rates of HIV infections and the state of Georgia ranks second among U.S. states in the rate of new HIV diagnoses. Only 73 percent of the people in the Atlanta metro area who have HIV know it, because not enough people are getting tested for the virus. (The national average is 87 percent.)
The program at Morris Brown hopes to reach more than 400 participants by 2017.
Read more at HBCU Digest.
article by Hadassah Egbedi via venturesafrica.com
Besides passion, a common reason often given by entrepreneurs when asked why, or how they started their businesses often entails discovering a gap in the market, which is often in the process of trying to solve a problem of their own. The background story of Funlayo Alabi, CEO of Shea Radiance, is not any different.
Mrs Alabi currently runs a multi-million dollar skin care company from her kitchen, one she started by chance. Her son was suffering from severe eczema, so she sought a more natural alternative to deal with it. “We had him on steroids. I thought to myself, “This boy is going to live on steroids if I don’t find a more natural alternative,” she told Inc. Alabi who hadn’t been a fan of shea butter as a kid, reluctantly called her mother and asked her to bring some on her next visit to the States.
Found in the tropics of Africa, and only recently discovered by the West, the benefits of Shea Butter have been known to Africans for centuries as it has been used through generations. In Nigeria, it is not uncommon to have someone prescribe the multi-purpose butter which contains unique healing properties to you if you have any skin or hair issues. The site africansheabutter.org provides a long list of conditions shea acts a remedy for including dry skin, rash, blemishes, wrinkles, sunburn, chest cold, and dermatitis.
“I really do believe that a jar of cream is not just a jar of cream. It can change the world.”- Funlayo Alabi
Once Alabi put the shea to use, her son’s skin got better and felt better, plus it had a “beautiful, warm glow.” The woman soon realized the value of what she had on her hands and the largely untapped market that exists. This was about seven years in 2008. So she got right to work, mixing and making shea butter lotions and shampoos in her kitchen. “I have always had a business mind and knew that we could develop high-quality shea butter products and sell them.” Thus, her company, Shea Radiance, was born in Ellicott City, Maryland.
article by Nick Prevenas via uanews.arizona.edu
Ever since he can remember, Rick Kittles always wanted to know where he came from.
Born in Sylvania, Georgia, and raised near Long Island, New York, a great deal of his academic interest was sparked by the desire to trace his ancestral lineage as far back as it could go. This proved to be exceedingly difficult, for a number of reasons.
“There simply wasn’t a strong database in place or any kind of access to information on African genetics,” Kittles said. “Records were either inaccurate or nonexistent, so there were a number of hurdles in place for African-Americans to try to figure out their ancestry.”
An aptitude for biology, coupled with a deep exploration of Alex Haley’s novel, “Roots,” led Kittles on a path that eventually would help thousands of people like him clear these hurdles. He is the director of the Division of Population Genetics at the University of Arizona, which he joined in July 2014.
Developing and implementing a comprehensive African genealogy database seemed daunting at first, but during his graduate studies at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and, later, though his work at Howard University’s College of Medicine in the late 1990s, Kittles met the historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and fellow geneticists who could help turn this dream into a reality.
“I was looking at my own DNA profile, analyzing my Y-chromosome lineage, and I noticed my Nigerian lineage didn’t track with the other Y-chromosome samples from West Africa,” Kittles said.
article by Nigel Roberts via newsone.com
The Obama administration wants to correct racial and ethnic disparities in how school districts determine which students to place in special education programs.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education proposed (PDF) standardizing the system, Education Week reports.
Each state currently uses its own method of determining “significant disproportionality” in special education. Federal education officials believe the rule change would likely cause more states to fall under that category, according to Education Week.
That’s significant because the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, requires school districts to set aside 15 percent of their federal funds for special education students.
The site points out that a 2013 Government Accountability Office report (PDF) says just 2 percent of school districts nationwide were identified as having minorities represented disproportionately in special education. “This figure fails to represent the true scope and breadth of significant disparities we currently see in special education,” says the report.
“The data we’ve seen makes it very clear that we, as a country, are not living up to the intent of the law,” said acting Education Secretary John B. King Jr., according to Education Week.
Federal education officials also suspect that minority students with learning disabilities are disproportionately disciplined at schools nationwide.
article by Cynthia Okoroafor via venturesafrica.com
As the Ministerial Conference on Immunisation in Africa commences today in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, vaccine experts and officials representing 26 African countries from the ‘meningitis belt’ celebrate the introduction of MenAfriVac® and its achievements in the continent’s public health system. In five years, MenAfriVac, which is designed, developed and produced for use in Africa, has nearly eliminated serogroup A meningococcal disease from the meningitis belt countries and is now being integrated into routine national immunisation programs.
Since the vaccine was first introduced in Burkina Faso back in 2010, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that 16 of the 26 countries in the African meningitis belt, between Senegal and Ethiopia, have conducted initial mass vaccination campaigns to protect their citizens. As a result of this, more than 235 million children and young adults, between the ages of 1 and 29 years old, have been immunised, eliminating meningitis A disease in those areas.
Manuel Fontaine, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund’s (UNICEF) Regional Director for West and Central Africa stated that “It’s clear that the rollout of the meningitis A vaccine has been a great success story in sub-Saharan Africa. At UNICEF, we’ll continue to work with national authorities, health workers and traditional and religious leaders so that vaccines remain well accepted and reach every community across the meningitis belt.”
The officials at the conference thereby plan a transition from mass campaigns to vaccine use in childhood immunisation programs to prevent the resurgence of deadly epidemics. Cases of meningitis A reduced from over 250,000 during an outbreak in 1996 to just 80 confirmed cases in 2015 and those were in countries that had not yet conducted mass immunisation campaigns.
Speaking ahead of the conference yesterday, Prof. Awa Marie Coll-Seck, the Minister of Health and Social Services of Senegal, encouraged African countries to reflect on the common goals and aspirations made in 2012 regarding achieving Universal Access to Immunisation by 2020 and improving healthcare for children.
“Thanks to immunisations, there has been a 55 percent reduction in child deaths in the past 25 years…Vaccines are a cost-effective proven investment that spur national development. Studies show that every dollar spent on immunization programs can provide economic returns up to sixteen times for a given country. Treating vaccine-preventable diseases places an enormous strain on public health systems by redirecting limited human and economic resources towards treatment instead of prevention.”
Furthermore, she stated it is essential to prioritise health for every child in every part of Africa to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. According to her, the Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa represents a key moment for African nations to catalyse support and accountability to ensure that universal immunization is made a reality.
To read full article, go to: http://venturesafrica.com/how-a-vaccine-is-improving-the-african-childs-health/
article by Zon D’Amour via hellobeautiful.com
Where can we make an appointment to get our hair done by 8-year-old Lauren Laray? The 3rd grader has a remarkable talent for doing hair and she’s putting her skills towards an excellent cause.
After learning that her best friend’s little sister had cancer and was losing her hair to chemotherapy, Lauren decided to make her a wig. She now wants to help even more little girls feel beautiful while they fight to overcome one of the most difficult times in their lives.
Initially, Lauren was going to make 10 wigs but by the summer, she hopes to finish 30 wigs that will be donated to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation.
“Some of them will be blonde; some of them will be redheaded for redheaded little girls. I’ll have a whole bunch because other girls have other styles for their hair”, said Lauren.
Lauren has launched a GoFundMe page where she’s already exceeded the $900 needed to make the 30 wigs which costs $30 per head for supplies. The Las Vegas native uses a crochet needle, weave cap, two packs of hair and a bow.
“I won’t need a thank you, I’ll just see a smile on their face and I’ll be happy,” said Lauren. To see her demonstrate how to make a wig, watch below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK__Cy_l9ws&w=420&h=315]