Former North East Side resident Daroun Jamison considers this a powerful question: What does it mean to be a black man?
Before it can be answered, he said, you have to take race out of it. A man has to recognize his personal belief system first, Jamison, 38, said.
“If a person doesn’t have that definition, then what do they have to work toward?”
Jamison and neighbors discussed such questions during a community retreat with researchers from Christiana Care, Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children and the University of Delaware.
The retreat focused on bringing light to pressing health issues on the East Side, especially surrounding infant mortality and the roles fathers play.
The infant mortality rate is over 14.4 per 1,000 births for the community, nearly double the state average.
Babies in Delaware are born too early and weigh too little, not because of medical reasons, said Dr. Iman Sharif, a pediatrician with Nemours. Mothers are dealing with chronic stress from poverty and volatile life experiences.
An analysis of Medicaid data from 2011 to 2012 found that women from the East Side under age 45 visited a New Castle County emergency department four or more times for complications related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Over 40 percent recorded fatigue, herpes gestation, insufficient weight gain and premature labor.
While we don’t want to dissuade people from getting help, said Dr. Karyl Rattay, director of the Delaware Division of Public Health, those are conditions that could be discussed with a gynecologist or prenatal provider earlier so emergency room trips could be prevented.
Rattay said that enforces the importance of home visit programs such as Parents as Teachers, Healthy Families America and Healthy Women, Healthy Babies.
Healthy Women, Healthy Babies targets African American women and women with risk factors such as depression or diabetes. Last year, 1,471 women from the East Side participated in the program.
Connecting women to services will only help so much, said Rysheema Dixon, a health advocate with Henrietta Johnson. Fathers need to be part of the equation, too.
Jamison said he had many friends growing up that were young fathers. One friend had two children by the time he was 16.
How can you provide for someone when you are a teenager without a stable job?
Some find it easier to disappear from family life, which can have detrimental effects.
Jamison doesn’t have any children, but he recalls his relationship with his father as a complicated one.
At one point, he was on track to be a junior deacon. But life got in the way. Living on welfare made money tight. His family was eventually evicted from their home. He dropped out of school and began living on his own. Soon after, he began selling drugs.
Then the unthinkable happened. “I wound up shooting someone,” Jamison said. It was three days before he turned 18.
Jamison turned himself in and spent 16 years in prison. It was there that he had a change of heart and mind.
While working on an art project for a substance abuse class, Jamison stumbled across an article about a man who was incarcerated and became a chef after taking culinary classes behind bars. Another man in that article started a publishing business in an urban community when he got out.
It gave him hope and made him want to succeed, he said. Now, four years out, he lives in New Castle and is taking critical thinking and entrepreneurship classes at Delaware Technical Community College in Wilmington. He’s also working on a manuscript on how to overcome personal setbacks.
It takes time and introspection, but it is possible to change your life path, Jamison said. It’s especially important for young fathers. Sometimes being present is more than just providing.
If you have a daughter, Jamison said, “be the person she can talk to in her life.”
Jen Rini can be reached at (302) 324-2386 or jrini@delawareonline.com. Follow @JenRini on Twitter.
Engaging men on East Side could be key for baby, mom"s health - The News Journal
