February 2025
Black History Month
National Children’s Dental Health Month
National Cancer Prevention Month
I. Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) encourages the public to study African American history through the lens of “African Americans and labor” for the year 2025. Of the many things they inform, one fact is that “2025 marks the 100-year anniversary of the creation of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids by labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, which was the first Black union to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor.” Click here for more facts, as well as the ASALH themes.
II. The findings from the 2018-19 California Smile Survey demonstrate a sharp divide based on race, ethnicity, language and socioeconomic status. Specifically, Black children have the highest prevalence of untreated tooth decay – over one in four (26 percent) of Black children had untreated tooth decay, nearly double the rate of white children (14 percent). This 2021 study shows how racism plays a key role in producing and sustaining oral health inequities.
III. The American Cancer Society’s Cancer Facts & Figures for African American/Black People 2022-2024 report lists structural racism, socioeconomic status, access to health care, comorbidities, and medical mistrust as reasons for why for most types of cancer, Black people have the highest death rate and shortest survival of any racial/ethnic group in the United States.
***CALL TO ACTION***
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration website’s National Black Family Cancer Awareness link includes many opportunities for us to coordinate and raise awareness about health disparities as experienced by Black patients. Activities include participating in their different awareness/messaging events in 2025 and social media campaigns/toolkits (#BlackFamCan)
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.