Afro-Netizen™

Why? Report blames racism, says mammograms, care may be inferior

By Jim Ritter
Health Reporter
Chicago Sun-Times

African-American women in Chicago are much more likely than white women to die of breast cancer, and the racial gap is widening, according to a new study that calls the disparity "morally wrong, medically unacceptable and reversible."

Just 10 years ago, black and white women in Chicago died at the same rate from breast cancer. But the most recent figures available, for 2003, show the mortality rate among black women was 73 percent higher, researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital's Urban Health Institute report in a study being released today. Nationwide, the gap was about half that -- 37 percent.

The disparity in death rates appears to be the result of racism, "and it appears to be institutionalized," said Alan Channing, chief executive of Sinai Health System.

In Chicago, white women are diagnosed with breast cancer at a rate 15 percent higher than the rate in black women.

So why are more blacks dying from the disease?

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An Interview with Shana Griffin
By Elena Everett

(From "One Year After Katrina" a 98 page report released yesterday by Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch)

There have been a lot analyses about race and class post-Katrina, how does your organizing philosophy differ and work to address women’s issues?

I, and the women I work with try to organize from an intersectionality approach that includes an analysis of gender, race, class, citizenship status, sexuality, and a critique of privilege. We try to organize from an unfragmented approach, meaning we don’t expect people to walk through the door and drop 3/4ths of themselves and come in as a just woman or just a black person. We don’t exist as just women, we do have a race and we do have a class and ethnic background. It’s important to look at things from an intersectionality - in the Gulf Coast there are reasons why things are unfolding the way they’re unfolding.

On TV, immediately after Katrina and as things began to unfold in the city with the flood waters, most of the faces we saw were women, poor black women and their children and their families. If you took any urban area and gave it 24 hour notice to evacuate, it would be the same population, the same poor black women in the most vulnerable situations.

What do you see as unique challenges and issues women have been facing in the Gulf post-Katrina?

One of the biggest post-Katrina challenges is the complete absence of consideration or special provisions to meet the needs of women. So many studies related to disaster or times of war and conflict show that women are one of the most vulnerable populations. Violence against women increases as well as their responsibilities since they are generally the primary caregivers for the elderly and children. There’s been an invisibility toward the needs of women of color in the Gulf Coast region.

To me, it’s not enough to have a solid race and class analysis, because beyond those two, you also need a gender analysis. Because of the absence of the gender analysis of many agencies, organizations who identify as women of color organizations have to constantly fight to render ourselves visible and at the same time, we have to justify our existence in the work that we’re trying to do.

New Orleans pre-Katrina population was more than half women and today when you look at the statistics around housing, healthcare, even incarceration  women and especially black women are much more vulnerable. In 2003 in Louisiana 80% of new HIV cases were black women - in public housing, the vast majority of tenants were women…I can go on and on  those who are most directly impacted are women when it comes to the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters.

How do you feel the initiative and clinic will work to address some of those issues?

The purpose of the clinic is to improve low-income and uninsured women of color’s healthcare access and to promote an holistic and community-centered approach to primary to healthcare. At the same time we look at the oppression and violence that have impact on the health status of women and to improve those situations. It’s more than providing healthcare services it’s also about challenging the conditions that limit our access and our opportunities, such as poverty, racism, gender-based violence, imperialism, and war. We see it as more than just a clinic  we want it to also be an organizing center that can meet immediate needs while also working for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice.

We see our clinic as a great opportunity to talk to people and discuss why these services and this approach is needed. We have the power to reinvent ourselves and create institutions that are equitable.

Shana Griffin is resident of New Orleans and organizer with INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence and Critical Resistance New Orleans. Shana grew up in the Iberville Housing Development and is completing a Masters Degree in Sociology at the University of New Orleans. She is currently working on the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative, which is a coordinating with several organizations to open a Women’s Health Clinic this September in the historic Treme district of New Orleans. For more information, email whji_info at yahoo dot com.

Elena Everett is Program Associate, Institute for Southern Studies and Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch. She can be reached at elena at southernstudies dot org.

Unsafe streets, unhealthful food make it tough for some Chicagoans to get in shape

By John Keilman
Tribune staff reporter

For Bridget Smith, getting fit means cutting calories, burning fat and avoiding wild dogs.

The 52-year-old Chatham bookseller is trying to lose 20 pounds to keep her diabetes in check, but like many who live in poor or minority Chicago neighborhoods, she faces a host of unique challenges.

The fruits and vegetables sold in her local market are so unappealing that she drives to Hyde Park to shop. Going for a bike ride means attaching the wheels kept in her third-floor apartment to the frame stashed downstairs, a precaution she took after thieves snatched her last bicycle.

And she tries to round up a group when she goes for a walk, thinking the vicious dogs that sometimes plague the South Side might be more likely to attack a lone pedestrian. It all adds to the difficulty of losing weight, Smith said.

"There are less options here," she said. "And less of a support system."

Dropping pounds is a daunting task for anybody, but it can be especially tough in urban neighborhoods. Experts say the areas often offer copious fast food, little healthy produce, meager or substandard recreational facilities and streets that feel too dangerous to walk or bike--hardly a recipe for weight-loss success.

"This isn't just a matter of individual will power. There are a lot of other influences out there," said Dr. Deborah Burnet, a University of Chicago medical professor who has investigated obesity on the South Side.

Research has long demonstrated a link between poverty and weight. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that poor women are twice as likely to be overweight as their affluent counterparts.

The disparities go down to the neighborhood level. A survey released last year by Sinai Health System found that Chicago's Norwood Park, a predominantly middle-class area, had a lower percentage of obese adults than poorer neighborhoods such as Humboldt Park and North Lawndale.

"I don't know if there's ever been a study that hasn't found that poor people and people of color always have much higher obesity rates than white people and better-off people," said Steve Whitman, director of the Sinai Urban Health Institute.

Cultural differences probably account for some of that; Whitman noted that overweight residents of black and Hispanic neighborhoods were more apt to view themselves as being at the correct weight or too skinny. Some experts cite a lack of awareness about how to eat healthfully or get sufficient exercise.

But experts also say other forces are at work, starting with the opportunities for exercise in struggling neighborhoods. Few have private health clubs, and fitness centers run by the YMCA and the Chicago Park District usually charge for entry.

The costs can be relatively low. The price at the Ogden Park fitness center in Englewood, for instance, is $20 for 10 weeks of access. But even that can be too much for the poor, said Angela Odoms-Young, a Northern Illinois University researcher who has studied the neighborhood's obesity risk factors.

Those who prefer jogging or biking face their own difficulties. Health surveys in Englewood and North and South Lawndale concluded that residents might not want to exercise outside because they perceived their neighborhoods as too dangerous.

Matilda Baker, 44, an accountant who lives in South Shore, knows that feeling. She used to work out at the local YMCA but dropped the family membership to save money when her daughter, a competitive swimmer, began practicing with a suburban club.

She and her husband now walk on the nearby lakefront path and are thinking about buying bicycles. But in her neighborhood, which has an above-average rate of violent crime, safety is always a concern.

"You never know if you take your bikes out if you'll come back," she said.

Finding a safe place to exercise isn't the only obstacle. Getting proper nutrition also can be a trial in many areas.

Walking through food stores in Englewood on a recent afternoon, Odoms-Young found few wholesome products. The area's lone major grocer, an Aldi on 63rd Street, had a decent selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, though the floor space reserved for its pallets of apples, corn, bananas and tomatoes was a fraction of what you'd find in a suburban supermarket.

Far more numerous were small convenience stores that carried little nutritious food aside from some frozen okra, shriveled potatoes or, in one case, a solitary head of lettuce that shared a dark refrigerator case with packages of hot dogs.

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No Benefits Seen in Study of Postmenopausal Black Women

By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News   

July 25, 2005 -- New research shows no bone benefits for healthy postmenopausal black women who took vitamin D supplements for three years.

The researchers don't dismiss the vitamin pills. They don't know if the results would be similar for women of other ethnic groups, elderly women, or those more severely lacking vitamin D.

The researchers included John Aloia, MD, of the Bone Mineral Research Center at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y. The study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Bone Background

Strong bones are important throughout life. Bone density peaks at about age 30. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, the critical years for building bone mass are from prior to adolescence to about age 30.

Bones naturally thin as we age. The worst cases result in osteoporosis -- thin, brittle bones that are more likely to break. Both men and women can develop osteoporosis or osteopenia, a milder condition that can lead to osteoporosis. Certain people are more likely to develop osteoporosis, and vitamin D deficiency makes it more likely.

Getting Vitamin D

Vitamin D is involved in bone health, along with calcium and other minerals. The body can make vitamin D when exposed to sunshine. It can also get vitamin D from supplements or certain foods, such as low-fat dairy products.

In old age, black women tend to get fewer bone fractures than whites.

It's harder for blacks to make vitamin D. Their skin color provides some natural sun protection, filtering out some sunshine needed to produce vitamin D.

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A drug recently approved to treat African-American heart disease seems to be just another case of the pharmaceutical industry's endless search for profits.

By Margaret Kimberly
The Black Commentator

It is hard to oppose an effort that purports to improve health care for African Americans. Black people suffer more from everything bad, including ill health.

When a drug company announced that it would market a heart failure treatment specifically for use by blacks, the silence from otherwise thoughtful persons and organizations was noticeable but not very surprising. In 1997 the federal Food and Drug Administration declined to approve BiDil, a treatment for heart failure. BiDil is actually a combination of two generic drugs used to treat chest pain and hypertension.

The FDA concluded that there was no proof of BiDil's effectiveness. That should have been the end of BiDil, until good old-fashioned capitalism and marketing turned its fortunes around. BiDil has now been approved for use in black heart failure patients. It is the first drug in America that has been approved specifically for the use of one racial or ethnic group. NitroMed, the pharmaceutical company that will produce BiDil, acted very shrewdly.

The drug maker achieved this success by giving the heads up to black leadership, lest it be accused of recreating the infamous Tuskegee experiment. NitroMed first went to the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Medical Association and the NAACP. The drug company was "aware of the political fallout if they did not have African American participation," said B. Waine Kong, executive director of the Association of Black Cardiologists. Too bad the participants didn't ask a question or two in the process.

We are told that BiDil showed great success in black patients. That doesn't mean very much because it was only tested on black patients. There is literally no evidence that the drug works better on one racial group than on another. NitroMed did what other pharmaceutical companies have always done. It gave money to people who later gave its medication the thumbs up. The Association of Black Cardiologists co-sponsored the clinical trials for BiDil, received $200,000 from NitroMed, and enthusiastically supported the drug's approval. That arrangement wasn't unusual.

In July 2004 the National Institutes of Health published a study urging millions of Americans to take statin drugs in order to lower their risk of heart disease. It was later revealed that eight of nine authors of the study had financial ties to makers of statin drugs. The ties were not made public when the dubious findings were first announced.

No one knows if BiDil is very effective or safe. If it isn't it will not be different from other drugs given FDA approval that were later discovered to be dangerous. Fenfluramine was marketed as Redux, a drug used to treat obesity. It was taken off the market after causing cases of heart valve damage and pulmonary hypertension. How many commercials exhorted consumes to ask their doctors about Vioxx and Celebrex? We now see commercials from law firms exhorting us to pursue malpractice suits against the makers of those drugs.

Past experience indicates that BiDil shouldn't be greeted as a health care panacea for anyone. It should be treated like all newly approved pharmaceuticals, with great caution if not suspicion. As Raymond Woosley, vice president for Health Sciences at the University of Arizona, advised Public Television, "Americans need to recognize that every time they put a pill in their mouth, especially a new pill that they've never taken before, it's an experiment. How big an experiment depends on the pill and how well it's been studied."

NitroMed is using black people to get a drug approved that it couldn't get approved otherwise and in the process maintaining a patent that keeps cheaper generics off the market until the year 2020. "[I]f BiDil is approved for African Americans only, the drug will have patent protection to 2020," wrote Motley Fool biotechnology industry analyst Karl Thiel. "That's because patents based on this demographic were filed after studies showed the drug was ineffective in a broader population.

If the drug is approved for a general heart failure audience, older use patents will apply and the drug would appear to have exclusivity only to 2007." BiDil isn't the 21st Century equivalent of the Tuskegee experiment. It is an example of what the pharmaceutical industry now does best, which is to produce drugs with dubious effectiveness that guarantee them large profits.

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By Jim Ritter
Health Reporter
The Chicago Sun-Times

A new study has found a huge disparity in smoking rates in six representative Chicago neighborhoods.

Only 18 percent of adults in white, middle class Norwood Park smoke, while 39 percent smoke in North Lawndale, a low-income black community.

"It is an alarming difference," said Joel Africk of the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago.

Smoking rates were 20 percent in mostly Mexican South Lawndale, 32 percent in half white, half Hispanic West Town, 33 percent in mostly black Roseland and 35 percent in Humboldt Park, which is half black, one quarter Puerto Rican and one quarter Mexican. Researchers from the Sinai Urban Health Institute reported the rates in the American Journal of Public Health.

By comparison, a 2000 nationwide survey found that 26 percent of American adults smoke.

Most smoking surveys are done on national samples, which can mask local differences. This makes it difficult to target smoking prevention programs where they're most needed, researchers said.

More smoking at lower incomes

Nationally, there's not much difference between black and white smoking rates. But Sinai researchers found that two predominantly black neighborhoods, Roseland and North Lawndale, had much higher rates than white Norwood Park.

Some African Americans may be smoking in response to stresses like poverty and racism, said Sinai researcher Steven Whitman. The tobacco industry also may be targeting black smokers, Whitman said. He noted a 1997 survey that found Chicago's black wards had an average of 25 tobacco billboards, while white wards had only five billboards.

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By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent 

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – The legacy of pioneering psychologist Kenneth B. Clark should inspire Black America to seek ways to develop and instill racial pride into African-Americans; especially young people say Black psychologists and social scientists around the nation. “

We’re in deep trouble. We have bought into the American standard of beauty. I look at some of the adolescents and young adults in Los Angeles. I can tell you. The last thing they want to be is Black,” says Sandra Cox, director of the Coalition of Mental Health Professionals in Los Angeles. “You look at the front cover of everything but Black Enterprise and you see what’s advertised – all of the blond Black women. And the whiter they look, the more they get on the front covers.”

Clark, the psychologist and educator whose 1950 report showed how racial segregation destroyed the self-esteem of Black children, influenced the U.S. Supreme Court to hold school segregation to be unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. case. He died May 1 at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. at the age of 90.

Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, also a psychologist, conducted a doll study in Clarendon County, S.C., involving 16 Black children, ages 6 to 9. They asked the children their perception of a White doll and a Black doll. Eleven of the students spoke negatively of the Black doll and nine spoke highly of the White doll over the Black. At that time, Clarendon County public schools had enrolled three times as many Black students as White students. But White students were receiving more than 60 percent of the educational funding.

“Throughout his life, he was a scholar practitioner. He wrote books, but he worked with Martin Luther King and the workers and leaders of the civil rights movement,” says Eddie N. Williams, former president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “We need to create an enterprise that deals with the next generation. And I think that’s where Dr. Clark would be if he were alive.”

If the doll study were done today, it might produce even worse results, says Julia Hare, a psychologist in San Francisco. “We need an update. I think we need to do the doll study again,” Hare says. Meanwhile, giving children dolls and other images that look like them is a powerful boost to self-esteem although some parents oppose it, Hare says.

“They think that if they give a child a doll that looks like them, they are teaching them racism. But, yet they don’t wonder why they don’t see White children with Black dolls,” Hare says. “And then we need to visit these schools. What pictures do they have on the walls? But, much of this should start at home with Mama…Every night, Black children should have something from Black literature read to them.”

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Patients more likely to suffer virulent breast disease, study finds

MSNBC.com

Women of African descent are more likely than whites to suffer an earlier and more virulent form of breast cancer, and doctors need to re-evaluate how black women are diagnosed and treated, a study said Monday.

“The discovery means we have to rethink how soon and how often we screen for breast cancer in women at risk for the most aggressive type of breast cancer, as well as how we prevent it and how we treat it,” said Funmi Olopade of the University of Chicago.

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By Robert Preidt
HealthDay News

The common Epstein-Barr virus may increase the risk of lupus in black Americans, researchers report.

Their study also found that genetic variations between individuals may influence immune system responses to the virus in people with lupus.

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Jason B. Johnson
Chronicle Staff Writer
The San Francisco Chronicle

President Bush's call in his State of the Union speech to fight the spread of HIV-AIDS among African Americans was greeted with praise, surprise and some skepticism by health advocates and black political leaders.

"Because HIV-AIDS brings suffering and fear into so many lives, I ask you to reauthorize the Ryan White Act to encourage prevention, and provide care and treatment to the victims of the disease," Bush told a joint session of Congress Wednesday. "And as we update this important law, we must focus our efforts on fellow citizens with the highest rates of new cases, African American men and women."

Bush's outspoken advocacy is in contrast with the silence of the man he calls his political hero, Ronald Reagan, who was criticized for failing to respond to the AIDS crisis during his presidency. Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist are placing an increased emphasis on addressing the disease.

"I think that it caught everyone off guard," said Phill Wilson, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute.

African Americans were disproportionately affected by HIV-AIDS early on in the epidemic, and that disparity has deepened over time, according to data published Wednesday by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

African Americans account for more AIDS diagnoses, people estimated to be living with AIDS and HIV-related deaths than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. Although African Americans represent only 13 percent of the population, they account for 40 percent of the 929,985 AIDS cases diagnosed since the start of the epidemic.

African Americans with HIV-AIDS also face greater barriers to accessing care than whites, according to the report.

Bush had discussed the problem in recent meetings with the Congressional Black Caucus and with a group of black ministers. After being criticized early in his administration for refusing to meet with the caucus, Bush reached out to black voters during last year's campaign by addressing the National Urban League and courting religious leaders.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, was part of the caucus delegation that met with Bush last week. Lee welcomed his comments, particularly since Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged during a campaign debate that he was unaware of how serious the AIDS problem was in the black community.

Lee said it was good the administration recognized the impact AIDS was having on the African American community, and she looks forward to making sure the president follows up with funding.

"In the past, the president's promises have failed to match his policies, " said Lee. "If the president is serious about addressing HIV-AIDS in the African American community, the budget he will unveil next week will provide adequate funding for programs like the Minority AIDS Initiative."

Calvin Gipson, who was grand marshal of the 2004 Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco, said he didn't watch the president deliver his address.

"It's difficult to listen to him talk," said Gipson, noting the serious need for education programs targeting African Americans. "AIDS is a crisis in the black community. Black people are dying at a time when other people (whites) are surviving."

Full article

By David McAlary
Voice of America

Washington - News reports say top U.S. health officials knew that a key AIDS drug President Bush has promoted for use in Africa can cause severe side effects, including death. The Associated Press, quoting government documents, reports that the health officials were warned that research on the drug was flawed and may have under-reported reactions.

President Bush announced a plan in 2002 to distribute a drug called nevirapine across Africa.

"My administration plans to make $500 million available to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV," he said.

The president hoped the drug would reach one million African women a year and cut HIV transmission during birth by nearly half.

But the Associated Press reports that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. government's medical research agency, chose not to inform the White House of the drug's side effects, potentially lethal liver damage and severe rashes.  Citing documents obtained from the health agency, the AP says 14 deaths and thousands of bad reactions during Ugandan testing were not disclosed.  But the news report says U.S. health officials did not want safety concerns to interfere with nevirapine's use as an inexpensive way to keep mothers from passing HIV on to their newborns.

The news report says the 2002 warnings about the drug were serious enough for the U.S. government to suspend its testing in Uganda for 15 months and to inform the country's government of the problems. They also caused the drug's maker to withdraw its request for permission to use the medicine to protect newborns in the United States.

But the Associated Press says the chief of U.S. AIDS research subsequently dismissed the problems with the nevirapine research in Uganda as overblown and ordered resumption of the studies over the objections of his staff.

A drug expert at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jonathan Fishbein, sharply criticizes his agency's actions on the nevirapine matter. His lawyer, Stephen Kohn, spoke on behalf of Dr. Fishbein, who has also been outspoken about what he has described as other U.S. drug regulatory failures.

This is one of the most outrageous medical scandals that I've ever heard of," he said.  "We do know deaths related to liver failures. We do know terrible injuries and probably deaths related to these rashes."

But National Institutes of Health officials say they remain confident after re-reviewing the Uganda study and other research that nevirapine can be used safely in single doses by African mothers to prevent HIV transmission during birth. President Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, also defends nevirapine use.

"It's a drug that is approved for use here in the United States," he noted.  "It is a drug that can help save lives. And the U.S. Public Health Service guidelines continue to recommend short-term therapy with nevirapine pine as an option for women who enter care late in pregnancy."

The White House spokesman also says that because of the concerns about nevirapine, the National Institutes of Health has asked outside experts to review its safety.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, which funds U.S. government programs, has asked the government's legal agency, the Justice Department, to investigate the National Institutes of Health's actions.

By Daniel Yee
Associated Press

ATLANTA, Dec. 5 -- A study aimed at determining whether some children with sickle cell anemia could be weaned off blood transfusion therapy has been halted because two young patients who stopped getting the procedure suffered strokes and others developed a high chance of strokes.

The National Institutes of Health decided to issue a clinical alert recommending that doctors continue with blood transfusions to reduce the risk of stroke among young sickle cell patients, even though the treatment has its own risk.

The study, called Stop II, was funded by the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and involved 23 U.S. medical centers and two in Canada.

The $15 million study, which started in July 2000, ended prematurely last month after 16 children with sickle cell anemia developed narrowed arteries and other risk factors for strokes after they stopped receiving blood transfusions. Two other children suffered strokes but are recovering, said Robert J. Adams, the study's principal investigator and professor of neurology at the Medical College of Georgia.

The study "showed that when transfusions were discontinued after a minimum of 30 months, a significant number of children reverted to high risk" of stroke, the federal agency's clinical alert said.

"I'm disappointed . . . that we weren't able to identify a group that we could consistently and safely bring off," Adams said.

Although the blood transfusions are effective, their long-term use can cause dangerous accumulations of iron that can lead to heart problems and liver damage.

"We're literally between a rock and a hard place. We need to prevent strokes. At the same time, we have a therapy that's not without risk," said Duane Bonds, the National Institutes of Health's sickle cell disease coordinator.

The original Stop study, which started in 1995, was halted two years later because transfusions were found to be so effective that researchers recommended all sickle cell children be given the treatment to prevent strokes.

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Matthew Herper
Forbes.com

NEW ORLEANS - When the human genome was unveiled in 2001, researchers made a point of saying that there is no genetic basis for what we call race--whether someone is Asian, African-American, or Caucasian. Mostly, that's true. There is much more variation within any single racial subgroup than there is between them.

So how do we explain the new heart failure pill tested by NitroMed?

The pill, a fixed combination of two generic ingredients, is the first drug tested only in African-Americans. Results unveiled this morning here at the American Heart Association meeting and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine are stunning. On top of the best treatments available, BiDil still increased survival of African-American heart failure patients by 43% compared with a sugar pill, while cutting hospitalizations by 33%. That's particularly impressive because heart failure, a chronic weakening of the heart's ability to pump blood, has a 50% mortality rate over five years.

Previously, BiDil had never been a true success in clinical trials containing both whites and blacks, but seemed to work well in African-Americans. Thanks in part to hard work by the Association of Black Cardiologists, it was tested in that group--and will now probably save many lives.

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Health insurance for poor 1st goal

By David Mendell
Tribune staff reporter
The Chicago Tribune

When Barack Obama enters the U.S. Senate in January, he'll be the sole African-American in the world's most powerful legislative body. But he also will arrive in Washington riding a wave of national media buzz and carrying an armful of political IOUs more befitting a Beltway insider than a newcomer.

That status, given a boost by his much-heralded keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, has propelled his image beyond all proportions that could be expected for a man who has never served in an office higher than Illinois state senator.

Obama has used his sudden national prestige to court his future colleagues aggressively. Because he was so far ahead in public opinion polls and so flush with campaign funds, Obama donated more than $268,000 in campaign money to other Senate candidates and traveled the country to lend his celebrity status to Democratic Party fundraisers and get-out-the-vote rallies.

"He has befriended a lot of candidates and a lot of incumbents. He has been generous to people, and they won't forget it," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). "He will come in the front door with people feeling familiar with him, with having a good, positive feeling about who he is and where he comes from, but also, they'll feel a personal connection to him. That's very rare."

If the past is prologue, Obama, 43, will endeavor to craft legislation that advances not only his political career, but also his personal agenda to further social justice. In Springfield, he sponsored legislation to stem racial profiling, soften the blow of welfare reform and expand health insurance to the poor.

For most of his eight years in the state Senate, the body was controlled by Republicans. He compensated for being in the minority by building personal relationships with members of the GOP and even joined a weekly bipartisan poker game.

"There are certain things about legislatures that are all the same," he said. "And one is, it's better to be in the majority than the minority. And the other thing is, if you got a chief executive of your own party, it means you are able to help shape and drive an agenda, instead of just react and respond to it."

Obama said he has targeted his first mission: expanding health insurance to those who lack it, particularly among the lower-income. Currently, 44 million Americans lack health insurance.

In choosing this cause, Obama is taking on an issue that crosses his constituencies: blacks, whites, even the middle class. As the lone black in the Senate, Obama said he understands the balancing act it will take to serve not only the black community, which has viewed his meteoric political ascent as a point of personal pride, but also Illinoisans of all races.

"It's an issue that cuts across demographic groups. So everybody is impacted by it," said Obama, who sponsored legislation in Illinois that expanded the Children's Health Insurance Program to more low-income families.

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By Regina Medina
The Philadelphia Daily News