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Holiday Travel Season: California Black Churches Offering COVID Testing, Vaccinations

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that Black people in the United States are being hospitalized for the virus 2.6 times more than whites. According to the agency’s website, Black people are also dying of COVID-19 at nearly twice the rate of whites.

Published

5 years ago

December 22, 2021

Oakland Post

The Rev. Dr. Lawrence E. Van Hook, pastor of Community Church in Oakland, says when vaccination began at his church earlier this year on Resurrection Sunday, he drew a parallel. “Vaccinations equal resurrection. Both of them give life as opposed to the death that this invisible, deadly virus has ministered all over the world,” he said.

By Aldon Thomas Stiles | California Black Media

The Rev. Dr. Lawrence E. Van Hook, pastor of Community Church in Oakland, says when COVID-19 vaccinations were first released late last year he did not want to get the shot.

“As African Americans, we have a healthy distrust of the government based on our history,” said Van Hook.

But after some soul searching, there was a shift in his spirit, says Van Hook. It led to a change of his heart.

“It came to me through God’s visitation of the holy spirit that not only do I need to get vaccinated, but I need to become an ambassador in the community where we live, work and worship. So that’s how my journey began.”

A little over a year ago, Van Hook joined hands with 38 other Black pastors from around California and formed the African American Community Empowerment Council (AACEC). With help from the state, members began setting up testing and vaccination sites at their churches.

“It is an initiative led by African American pastors, realizing that we need to pay special attention to our community – an affirmative action plan, if you please — for Black Californians who are understandably skeptical and don’t want to get vaccinated,” Van Hook said.

“Our healing, our hope, comes through vaccination,” he continued. “That is how we will push past this pandemic in a healthy way to get to our new normal.”

Now, ahead of the holidays, Van Hook and other pastors are encouraging Black Californians to get vaccinated and tested before traveling and getting together with relatives.

“A majority of the cases and deaths are among those who are unvaccinated,” said Van Hook. “For those of us who have been waiting to see what was in it, what it was all about, we now have over a year of vaccinations and nobody’s eyes have fallen out. No bug has been placed in us where we can be tracked. There are so many stories we have heard in social media.”

During the thick of the pandemic, the AACEC website says the pastors “stepped up,” responding to a call to action by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who asked all Californians to deploy every resource available to them to confront and defeat the deadly virus.

“Through this effort, testing of at-risk, underrepresented, and under-resourced African Americans, and all community members appearing for a test, will be phased across the state beginning in Alameda County and extending in regular intervals to encompass San Francisco, Sacramento, Solano, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Gabriel, and San Diego counties,” the AACEC website reads.

There are now also testing sites in San Bernardino County. Vaccination sites are located in Oakland, Pasadena, Sacramento and San Francisco.

Across the country, another organization called Choose Healthy Life (CHL) has similarly united Black religious leaders to battle COVID-19, opting to focus on tackling misinformation and increasing vaccination rates.

Black clergy members and civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, are leading the charge for this program.

“COVID-19 has exposed health disparities, and more disturbingly, the impact of misinformation among our own people. But I have looked beyond the horizon of today’s headlines. After 750,000 deaths in America and more than 5 million worldwide, the pendulum is beginning to swing —and Choose Healthy Life is at the vanguard of that change,” Sharpton said.

CHL spokesperson Judy Klym detailed the program’s scope.

“After launching CHL in 50 churches in five major cities in January 2021, the program’s expansion has led to more than 50,000 members of the public being educated and empowered,” she said. “Through this collaborative effort, more than 6 million people have been impacted. Choose Healthy Life now has 120 participating churches in 13 states.”

Klym cited the new Omicron variant as part of the reason for the urgency of this program’s implementation.

“As the threat from COVID continues with the emergence of the Omicron variant, the ongoing nature of the pandemic seems inevitable. CHL is rising to meet the challenge by building a sustainable infrastructure to help Black communities throughout the pandemic and future health crises,” Klym stated.

Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of CHL, says the Black church’s involvement in the COVID-19 fight is critical.

“The Black church and clergy have been a steadfast center of strength and leadership during so many of our crises and struggles in the past. Now, through the Choose Healthy Life Action Plan, they are once again leading the way by ensuring that Black communities are better informed and safer throughout the pandemic,” she said.

Van Hook says when vaccination began at his church earlier this year on Resurrection Sunday, he drew a parallel.

“Vaccinations equal resurrection. Both of them give life as opposed to the death that this invisible, deadly virus has ministered all over the world,” he said.

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Diabetes in Black California: Turning the Tide from Crisis to Control

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Published

1 day ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. Khadijah Lang is a family physician with a clinic in Los Angeles who specializes in several family medical practices, including prenatal care. Lang believes in family medicine. She says it is important to treat all members of a family. Thursday, June 5, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

By Charlene Muhammad, California Black Media

Crystal Lambert knew something was terribly wrong with her three-year-old granddaughter as she sped down the street trying to get her to the hospital.

“I thought she got a hold of some poison,” Lambert recalled.

Doctors found Lambert’s granddaughter had a blood sugar level over 800, diagnosing her with Diabetic Ketoacidosis(DKA), a state in which the body, starved of insulin, begins to shut down.

Lambert said she was born with a pancreas that was not fully functioning — it lacked the specialized cells required to produce insulin.

Her granddaughter survived and is five years old today. Now, she gives herself insulin shots, asks endless questions about her condition, and runs like the spirited child she is. But the terror of that night transformed Lambert — and ultimately inspired her to launch the We Fight Back Organization, a mobile health and food access initiative serving underserved communities across California. Lambert is the executive director.

The Crisis by the Numbers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black Americans were 24% more likely than the overall U.S. population to have diabetes in 2024. They also died from diabetes 78% more often than the general population in 2022. Black Americans are also more than twice as likely as the overall population to develop kidney failure caused by diabetes.

According to the California Health Care Foundation’s 2024 Health Disparities Almanac, Black Californians have the shortest life expectancy in the state at just 74.6 years — due in part to chronic conditions like diabetes and its devastating complications.

Leon Rock, co-founder of the African American Diabetes Association, believes statistics, though revealing, only tell part of the story.

“There are a whole bunch of Black folks that don’t tell you that they have diabetes — or don’t know,” he said.

And the disease itself, Rock is careful to note, is not what kills. “They die from the complications. That’s heart attack, that’s stroke, that’s amputations of legs, of feet. Going blind. All those complications are inherent in a system that has impacted Black folks with diabetes in California and across America.”

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of We Fight Back. She started the organization out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread the impact of her organization to the valley. Friday, June 6, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of the We Fight Back Organization, started out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread her organization to the valley, on Friday, June 6, 2026 Photo by Solomon O. Smith/ California Black Media

An Information Gap Fuels the Crisis

For Rock, part of the solution is diagnosis. He says the medical and public health systems are failing Black Californians by the absence of information designed for them.

“That is the bottom line. We need good information. Information that is culturally specific,” said Rock.

Telling people to eat healthy or exercise, he added, falls short when culturally specific alternatives are not provided, and when many residents of urban communities do not feel safe exercising in some neighborhoods – or outside at night.

Dr. Khadijah Lang, a family medicine physician and president of the Golden State Medical Association, agrees that the roots of the crisis run deeper than individual behavior — and blaming patients misses the point.

“We are not genetically predisposed to diabetes,” Lang said. “But the system under which we live increases the likelihood that we will develop it.”

What the Body Needs — What Communities Are Denied

Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90 to 95% of all diabetes cases, according to the CDC, develops when the body can no longer use insulin effectively to regulate blood sugar. Left unmanaged, it damages nerves, kidneys, eyes, and the cardiovascular system. The hemoglobin A1C test is a blood draw that reveals how the body has processed sugar over the previous three months — not just at the moment of the test. It is the standard tool for both diagnosis and ongoing monitoring.

That distinction matters, Lang emphasized, because patients cannot manipulate three months of blood sugar history the way they might fast for a day before a single blood draw.

“The pill is not meant to undo or control a sugar level that’s being constantly stressed,” Lang said. “It’s meant to work in conjunction with a low-carbohydrate diet and exercise.” She recommended at minimum 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week — breakable into 10-minute sessions for those who need it.

Lang stressed that education must be delivered in language people recognize and can relate to. The goal is to inform them of the choices that serve their health best, she said.

But for many Black Californians, even those informed choices remain out of reach, Lambert said.

“They need access to healthy foods and medication, too” she said.

California has made some critical policy advances. The state has expanded access to the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), which has transformed diabetes care for state residents. Assembly Bill 365, introduced in 2024, proposed requiring Medi-Cal to cover the costs of CGM and other related medical equipment but it failed in the State Senate. Since then, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) reports that the core Medi-Cal CGM benefit now available to eligible patients was solidified through previous budget actions and pharmacy policy updates.

These measures, while meaningful, have not closed the gap for the communities most at risk, according to advocates.

Control Through Community

Health care advocates conclude that the solution must be communal, culturally grounded, and sustained — not a fad, not a celebrity moment, not a single clinic visit. For example, observed Lang, lifestyle shaped by shared values and collective accountability can move the needle where individual prescriptions have not.

Rock is building infrastructure to match the urgency, establishing local chapters of the African American Diabetes Association across the country, with California next.

“We have to do for self, period,” he said. “Health is wealth. We have to eat to live.”

And Lambert, whose granddaughter unknowingly started all of this for her, keeps showing up.

“Diabetes advocacy is about dignity, education, prevention, and hope,” she said.

Video: Diabetes Disparity Exposed in California

This article is supported by the California Health Care Foundation

(CHCF). Visit www.chcf.org

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

1 day ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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NPRC Joins National Grand Jury Proceedings Seeking Accountability, Constitutional Restoration

Organizers state that testimony will explore historical and political developments that they believe have contributed to the expansion of corporate influence over public institutions and governmental decision-making. Participants are expected to discuss concerns regarding constitutional governance, individual liberties, property rights, and the protection of vulnerable populations, including seniors and persons with disabilities.

Published

1 week ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

Photo by Billie Powers.

Special to The Post

The National Probate Reform Coalition (NPRC) has joined Toll and Roll and a growing coalition of advocacy organizations, victims, whistleblowers, and citizen groups in support of a nationally broadcast People’s Grand Jury proceeding scheduled for July 1 and July 7.

Organizers describe the event as a public forum designed to examine allegations of government abuse, judicial misconduct, legislative failures, and the erosion of constitutional protections affecting millions of Americans.

The proceedings will feature testimony from victims, families, advocates, and organizations from across the country who contend they have experienced harm through government actions, institutional neglect, and failures of oversight.

According to organizers, the People’s Grand Jury will focus on concerns involving probate courts, guardianships, conservatorships, child welfare systems, property rights, civil liberties, and what participants view as a growing disconnect between government institutions and the constitutional rights of the people they are sworn to serve.

NPRC is participating because many of the issues being examined mirror the concerns raised by advocates, victims, and families who have participated in its monthly town halls. For years, families have reported cases involving exploitation of elders, questionable guardianships, estate depletion, denial of due process, and a lack of meaningful oversight within probate court systems.

“This proceeding gives victims and advocates an opportunity to place their experiences on the public record,” said Tanya Dennis, lead facilitator of NPRC. “For too long, families have struggled to have their voices heard regarding elder abuse, probate exploitation, and government inaction. This forum allows those stories to be shared before a national audience.”

In keeping with principles of transparency and fairness, invitations have been extended to legislators, members of the judiciary, law enforcement representatives, and other public officials who may wish to respond to concerns raised during the proceedings or defend actions taken by their respective institutions.

One of the primary outcomes sought by organizers is public consideration and support for the People’s Remedy and Restoration Act, a proposed legislative framework that advocates believe would strengthen oversight, increase accountability, provide remedies for victims of governmental abuse, and restore constitutional protections.

The proceedings are expected to be broadcast nationally, providing citizens throughout the United States an opportunity to observe testimony, review evidence presented, and participate in an ongoing conversation regarding government accountability and the protection of individual rights.

Advocates hope the hearings will encourage meaningful dialogue, legislative reform, and renewed public engagement in the democratic process.

Individuals, organizations, public officials, and members of the media interested in attending or obtaining access information may contact the organizers at tollandroll2025@gmail.com.

As Americans continue to debate the future of constitutional governance, judicial accountability, and the protection of vulnerable citizens, the July proceedings are expected to serve as a significant forum for public testimony and civic engagement. For more information, go to https://tollandroll.com