Health promotion in barbershops: balancing outreach and research in African American communities.

Promoting health and preventing illness among African American men, who die disproportionately from preventable diseases, is a challenging health disparity that has seen limited progress. However, focusing our efforts in places outside of traditional clinical and community settings such as the barbershop has shown promise for ameliorating these disparities. In particular, barbershop-based health promotion as conducted by the Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program has successfully reached nearly 10,000 men nationwide through a grassroots, volunteer-driven effort. At the same time, researchers have begun to conduct formal clinical trials in barbershops in order to explore interventions targeting this at-risk population. Herein, we describe, in brief a review of barbershop-based health promotion and the experience of this novel community-based organization. We argue for continuing to integrate evaluation and research using community-partnered principles into successful grassroots initiatives without dulling the practical impact of these programs is a crucial next step as we move beyond simply acknowledging health disparities and seek to find solutions.