MS Free Press: “Damion Portis is a barber, marketer and graphic artist by trade, but he’s used to investigating his clients’ health.
“I first started in the Healthy Heart Care Initiative,” he told the Mississippi Free Press in an Oct. 18 interview. Portis runs Klean Jokers Master Barber Art Studio in Jackson. As part of a partnership with the Mississippi State Department of Health, he gave out free blood-pressure screenings to identify early signs of hypertension or heart disease.
“(The program) specifically targets those people who are disenfranchised, who may not have health insurance, and who typically do not go to get health checkups—(but) may be suffering from hypertension, diabetes and such,” Portis said. “High blood pressure is the number-one killer in the African American community.”
The program is a pragmatic concession to a real problem in Mississippi’s Black community. Lack of health insurance leads to a lack of preventative care, which results in worse health outcomes. Portis’ blood-pressure screenings served as ad-hoc interventions: on-ramps for preventative health-care for individuals who may not have otherwise encountered the medical system.
“If people have high blood pressure, we’d recommend them to their doctor,” he said. “If they didn’t have a doctor, we have a program and clinics affiliated with it that we could send their information to. And if they had an extremely high reading, they would do what they could to get them immediate health-care.”
Then coronavirus arrived. Barbershops across the U.S. faced the same grim realities as the rest of the country’s small businesses and venues for social gatherings. Brief involuntary shutdowns gave way to a voluntary evaporation of clientele.
“When COVID hit, it became a place where people did not want to be anymore,” Portis said. “And then when they did finally allow us to work in our barbershop, nobody wanted to sit in here and try to get their blood pressure taken. They wanted to get in and get out.”
Portis understood the anxiety. Information about COVID-19 was inconsistent, unclear, constantly evolving. “I’m an educated brother, but at the same time, I didn’t know enough about (the virus),” he said. “It took a while for us to become more comfortable with the information about how to move in this post-COVID environment.”
When the COVID-19 vaccines arrived, business owners and public-health officials alike finally had a tool that promised a return to some sense of normalcy. But that would take a public willing to get vaccinated. Portis, in his partnership with MSDH, found a way to grow the safety of his in-person services and continue the health-care initiatives he’d pursued in the past.
MSDH calls the program Shots at the Shop.”