As the accomplishments and sacrifices of African- Americans in Pennsylvania are celebrated during Black History Month, more than 2,550 individuals from the Black community in need of organ or tissue transplantation face an uncertain future. A shortage of organ and tissue donors means nearly 60 percent of those needing a transplant will wait for more than a year. Many can expect to wait for more than five years. Waiting for matched organs may mean a recipient will be sicker at the time of transplant1on, worse, die waiting.

CYPRESS, Calif.–UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group company, has named Dr. Sandra Bruce Nichols chief medical officer, West Region.

DR. SANDRA BRUCE NICHOLS

Dr. Bruce Nichols will focus on helping ensure access to and use of appropriate medical services for UnitedHealthcare plan participants, promoting quality clinical care and positive patient outcomes, and effectively managing health care costs.  She will also maintain relationships with contracted physicians and physician organizations throughout the region and collaborate with other staff physicians to achieve quality objectives.

Forward:

Few persons, perhaps, recall that among the opposing points of view held by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois was an approach to the problem of the health of the Negro. Early in this century, while still at Atlanta University, Dr. DuBois made the first significant scientific approach to the health problems and biological study of the Negro. He found a Negro public unprepared for it, and White public hostile to it. In 1915, Washington approached the problem of health from a different viewpoint by crystallizing sentiment for a National Negro Health Week.

This is but part of the story which Dr. Montague Cobb, professor of anatomy in the Howard University School of Medicine, tells as he points out how the difference in the life expectancy of Whites and Negroes has been reduced fifty percent in the last fifty years.