It's Time for a Haircut: a Perspective on Barbershop Health Interventions Serving Black Men.

Abstract

Black men in the USA experience disproportionate cardiovascular disease mortality compared to their white counterparts, in part due to an excess of uncontrolled hypertension. A promising intervention to address these disparities involves the direct pharmacologic management of hypertension by clinical pharmacists in Black male patrons of barbershops, as demonstrated in the Los Angeles Barbershop Blood Pressure Study (LABBPS). Despite the observed reduction in systolic blood pressure of > 20 mmHg after 1 year, the feasibility of scaling up such an intervention to a regional or national platform remains uncertain. Here we explore the success of LABBPS in the context of prior barbershop interventions and theorize the most important aspects driving the observed reductions. We further make a case for prioritizing preventive care in nontraditional settings in an effort to reduce health disparities.