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. 2011 Aug;101(8):1392-401.
doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300125. Epub 2011 Jun 16.

Making ENDS Meet: community networks and health promotion among Blacks in the city of Brotherly Love

Margo Brooks Carthon  1
Affiliations

Making ENDS Meet: community networks and health promotion among Blacks in the city of Brotherly Love

Margo Brooks Carthon. Am J Public Health. 2011 Aug.

Abstract

This historical inquiry illustrates the power of social networks by examining the Starr Centre and the Whittier Centre, two civic associations that operated in Philadelphia during the early 20th century, a time when Black Americans faced numerous public health threats. Efforts to address those threats included health initiatives forged through collaborative social networks involving civic associations, health professionals, and members of Black communities. Such networks provided access to important resources and served as cornerstones of health promotion activities in many large cities. I trace the origins of these two centers, the development of their programs, their establishment of ties with Black community residents, and the relationship between strong community ties and the development of community health initiatives. Clinicians, researchers, and community health activists can draw on these historical precedents to address contemporary public health concerns by identifying community strengths, leveraging social networks, mobilizing community members, training community leaders, and building partnerships with indigenous community organizations.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Cooperative Coal Club Source. Starr Centre, “Annual Report,” 1911. Reprinted with the permission of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Coal Club, “Ready for the Lecture to Begin” Source. Starr Centre, “Annual Report,” 1906. Reprinted with the permission of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Elizabeth Tyler, RN, with members of the Little Mother's Club. Source. Whittier Centre, “Annual Report,” 1915. Reprinted with the permission of the Urban Archives, Temple University Libraries.s
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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References

    1. The enduring pattern of health inequities among Black communities has been captured in the work of a number of historians from the 19th and early 20th centuries. For more on the history of illness among Blacks, see: The enduring pattern of health inequities among Black communities has been captured in the work of a number of historians from the 19th and early 20th centuries. David McBride, From TB to AIDS: Epidemics among Urban Blacks Since 1900 (New York: University of New York Press, 1989); Keith Wailoo, Dying While in the City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Vanessa Gamble, Germs Have No Color Lines: Blacks and American Medicine 1900–1940 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989); Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr, Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)
    1. .The poor health of Blacks during the early 20th century captured the attention of a wide range of scholars and public health commentators. See: W.E.B. Dubois, “The Health of Negroes,” in The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899), 147–63; C.R. Grandy, “The Control of Tuberculosis in the Negro,” Virginia Medical Monthly 54 (1927): 566–71; C. Guild, “A Five Year Study of Tuberculosis among Negroes,” Journal of Negro Education July (1937): 548–52; Henry R.M. Landis, A Report of the Tuberculosis Problem and the Negro (Philadelphia: Henry Phipps Institute, 1923), 10a, table 7
    1. Suellen M. Hoy, “‘Municipal Housekeeping’: The Role of Women in Improving Urban Sanitation Practices, 1880–1917,” in Population and Reform in American Cities, 1870–1930, ed. M.V. Melosi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 173–98
    1. Susan L. Smith, Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890–1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 32. See also: Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1998)
    1. The formation of Black churches and other social and benevolent societies represented an important antidote to anti-Black sentiment, social isolation, and prejudice. Philadelphia's Free African Society, established in 1787 by Richard Allen and Absolam Jones, is an example of such an organization. Hine and Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope, 39

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