A little off the top and some healthy advice, too
1/20/2008 Providence, RI Delphine Schrank Providence Journal (projo.com) In the annals of beauty, the pompadour, the beehive and the Afro all had their day. Now comes the lifesaving haircut. From the padded swivel chairs in his Washington, D.C., barbershop, Clarence “Chile” Brace dispatched two freshly trimmed customers with hypertension straight to the emergency room. Around the corner, at the Divine Transformation Beauty Salon, beautician Arnica Ford cajoled a 300-plus-pound patron into trying a fiber-rich diet. And nearby, Marquita Wise opened her rose-garlanded hair salon, Fresh Cut II All About You, on a Sunday night to check the blood pressure of a client who had nearly fainted after learning that her daughter had died in a car crash. Brace, Ford and Wise are among African-American barbers and beauticians in five D.C. shops with blood pressure machines and digital scales tucked between hair-drying bonnets and bottles of shampoo. They have been enlisted in a program underwritten by insurers CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and the MedStar Research Institute to combat coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death among black Americans. Modeled after a Baltimore program coordinated by the University of Maryland’s Department of Medicine, the D.C. program trains stylists how to screen clients for obesity and high blood pressure and when to urge them to follow up with a doctor. The plan is to be implemented in 12 shops by year’s end. “Everyone wants to be beautiful, whether they go to a hairstylist or barber or whether they go to a doctor,” Ford [...]