African American and Latino Pastor’s unite to combat health care disparities among the minority populations

Pastor Matthew L. Brown, who in November of 2007 challenged Pastors to take a pledge toward healthy living in order to fight diseases such as Diabetes, which is prevalent among African Americans and Latinos, now has another larger issue to champion and has rallied the faith community in support of the poor and their legitimate right for health care services regardless of their economy. Pastor Brown and the local clergy are supporting Dr. Raul Vazquez and other partner physicians, who recently revealed alarming treatment of two patient case studies dealing with the same illness and having different types of health care coverage, yet treated vastly different. In some instances, patients with Medicaid were denied services from the growing number of physicians who do not accept Medicaid.

Pastor Brown says, “the distinction between patients and the disparity of their treatment should not be discriminative. Now that Dr. Vazquez has provided us with the facts, we will not standby and ignore the issues that hinder the communities that we serve and reside in.”