Sullivan, Wilder Address Black Media Convention

Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, urged black journalists Friday to join in a partnership with government to help improve the health of the poor and minority communities.

“The health deficit in our minority communities needs to be addressed by journalism as well as government if it is to be reduced and erased,” Sullivan said in a dinner address to more than 1,500 delegates to the 15th annual convention of the National Assn. of Black Journalists at the Century Plaza.

Earlier Friday, Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder also appealed to black journalists to play a role in improving conditions for blacks by becoming active in covering a broad spectrum of news going beyond events affecting the black community and of special interest to African Americans.

“In this age of growing international interdependence, too many of today’s African Americans know little beyond their own community,” Wilder said. He said black Americans must learn more about such issues as taxes, the federal budget, the trade deficit, the cost of health care and foreign events.

Sullivan, in an address sponsored by The Times, cited numerous examples of the disparity in health status between blacks and whites, such as the higher infant mortality and death rates from cancer, AIDS, diabetes and heart disease in black communities. In prepared remarks, he said the inspector general has data showing that blacks wait twice as long as whites for kidney transplants.

Sullivan, who is black, pledged “to explore every appropriate and creative possibility to stop the rampant and disproportionate incidence of disease, disability and premature death in our poor and minority communities.” Sullivan was criticized this week by Rep. Pete Stark (D-Oakland) for promoting Bush Administration policies on abortion and medical care that Stark believes harm poor people and minorities.

Sullivan continued to counter Stark, saying, “I guess I should feel ashamed because Congressman Stark feels I am not a good Negro. . . . This is not the 1890s, this is the 1990s, and none of us can afford to have any more good Negroes.”

Sullivan repeated his opposition to national health insurance, claiming that blacks would disproportionately suffer under it.

“The rich can always afford private care, but those who rely on a scheme of national health insurance--the poor and disadvantaged--will have to get in line. And, historically, you know where our place in the line has been--and it’s not in the express lane.”

In an address earlier in the day, Wilder specifically cited problems in the savings and loan industry as affecting blacks, noting that losses could cost American taxpayers as much as $1.4 trillion.

“Think of the inner-city schools that could have been helped with that money,” said Wilder, a Democrat who is the first popularly elected black governor in the nation’s history. “Think of the prenatal health care, the lost resources for the fight against drugs and crime, the self-help programs that could have been funded--all lost forever.”

Robert Steinbrook is a Times medical writer and Bill Stall is a Times political writer.