Two days a week, John Tate picks a Chicagoland neighborhood and, all day, talks with locals at food pantries and grocery stores, bus and train stops and clinics to share information about free breast cancer and reproductive cancer services and resources.
Since 2022, Tate has been a community health worker for Equal Hope, an organization that started nearly 20 years ago to address the disparity in breast cancer deaths between Black and white women in Chicago — a gap that’s glaring on the West Side.
According to the Chicago Health Atlas, West Garfield Park has the second-highest female breast cancer mortality rate in the city, following Fuller Park on the South Side, with over 41 of every 100,000 women dying from the cancer. In North Lawndale, that number is 33.5, and in Austin its nearly 26. In nearby Humboldt Park and Belmont Cragin, and even the Loop, the number is half that, with 12-to-14 of every 100,000 women dying from breast cancer.
According to Equal Hope, Chicago was No. 1 in the nation in 2017 in reducing breast cancer deaths from 62% to 32% for Black women.
Prior to that decrease, “that disparity was greater than any other city in the United States,” said Dr. Paris Thomas, Equal Hope’s CEO. “We go where the disparities are,” she added of which neighborhoods Equal Hope focuses their outreach and education efforts on.
Equal Hope was formerly the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force. Founded in 2008, the taskforce identified access to high-quality mammography and treatment as the leading causes for the disparity in breast cancer deaths. According to Thomas, the taskforce developed the nation’s first statewide mammography project: the Chicago Breast Cancer Quality Consortium. The project analyzed the quality of mammography in Chicagoland facilities, identifying which were excelling and which could improve.
The Chicago Breast Cancer Quality Consortium catapulted Equal Hope past its research arm, into additional focuses on policy work and direct services.
Tate focuses on Equal Hope’s direct services arm of outreach and education as one of seven Equal Hope community health workers that covers the entire Chicagoland area, including 10 zip codes on the West Side. On most Tuesdays and Thursdays, he travels to a neighborhood to educate residents about the services that Equal Hope can connect them to, like those for cervical, mammograms, Covid and HPV vaccines, blood pressure and diabetes checks.
“They may not sign up for a screening or engage with our program that first time, but they get to know our program and our team. Our team keeps showing up, and you keep seeing us,” Thomas said. “That’s how health access works. It takes multiple times for some people to get engaged.”
Community health workers also help people find a primary care doctor, or serve as the go-between for patients and their physicians, and help provide free transportation to get to appointments. They also regularly connect with clients.
“I’m checking in with you monthly, seeing how you’re doing, what’s going on. ‘Do you need transportation? How did your appointment go?’” Tate said. “If they see that the support is there, nine times out of ten, they’ll catch on and try to take care of themselves because they know that they got a service behind them that’s not going to break their bank.”
Equal Hope doesn’t just educate people about breast and cervical cancer, among other health disparities, but makes it more accessible to address these conditions.
“Most of our clients are making under $20,000 a year. Getting to the clinic is probably not something that they would put in their top-ten list, but if we can assist them, we can help them get their health a little bit better,” Tate said.
Along with the reduced death rate in 2017 for women with breast cancer in Chicago, Tate said he’s heard positive feedback from clients.
“I’ve seen testimonies of women whose lives have been saved because of a community health worker at an event saying, ‘Hey, have you had your cervical or mammogram screening?’ And the majority of Afro-American and Brown women have not. They don’t know anything about it.”
Equal Hope on the West Side
Tate also works on the Wellness West Project, where Equal Hope connects clients with health care services, clinics, mental health facilities and social services on the West Side. Through Wellness West, Tate checks in with over 80 West Siders a month, or about 15 a week, connecting clients to services or simply having a casual conversation about the status of their health.
“It came about because they noticed the gap in health care on the West Side of Chicago. They noticed that people were dying at an alarming rate,” Tate said of Wellness West.
When Tate first started canvassing the Austin community, he said “people thought I was a joke.” But they eventually bought into his advocacy work, and he saw the disparity in those who had less access to, and education about, health care.
“Most individuals in the Black and Brown community, if they’re not hurting, they’re not going to go see a PCP,” Tate said. He himself didn’t have a regular primary care physician until his 40s. “But if I would have gone when I was 21 to do the annual checkups, I would’ve known health is wealth.”
As a result, many people on the West Side have gone without services that could improve their health or prevent health complications later in life.
“I believe that on the West Side, there’s an uptick in those diseases,” like breast and cervical cancer, Tate added. “I talk to a lot of young people and middle-aged women who haven’t had an HPV vaccination.”
Thomas said it “has been proven through research that cervical cancer can be eradicated if everyone gets the HPV vaccine.”
Equal Hope’s role as a convener could help prevent cervical cancer in years to come — and was likely a factor in the decrease in breast cancer deaths among Black women in Chicago around 2017.
“We alarmed the bells here in Chicago to say that this was an issue,” Thomas said of the disparity in breast cancer deaths. “I think everyone started to pay attention and make changes.”
“I think education is a key factor,” Tate agreed. “Beating the pavement in the communities and talking with the people, we can shorten the gap on a lot of diseases that our Black and Brown women have.”
Now, at a time when the federal government is cutting off access to healthcare for vulnerable populations, Thomas said, “Our initial mission is to eradicate disparities. But we can’t do that if people can’t even access health care or feed themselves … We’re trying to remove barriers to ensure that people can access these things.”
Equal Hope is currently based near the Medical District at 300 S. Ashland Ave., but the group is moving into the Sankofa Wellness Village in West Garfield Park once it opens.
“We get a chance to actually greet and meet the individuals in that area,” Tate said. “I’m just looking forward to the years to come to continue providing these services and educating our people on the West Side, South Side, all over the City of Chicago,” he added. “I want everybody to get screened. I want everybody to get healthy.”