National Action Network partnered with CVS Health to bring free health screenings directly to the Harlem community at Mother AME Zion Church, the temporary location of the House of Justice Saturday Action Rally. The screenings were free and open to the public, with no insurance required.
For generations, Black Americans have carried a heavier health burden than the country cares to admit. Higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Later diagnoses. Worse outcomes. Not because of anything inherent in our bodies, but because of what has been withheld from our communities: access, coverage, trust, and time.
A health screening is not a small thing. High blood pressure carries no symptoms until it takes something from you. Diabetes can move quietly for years. A screening that takes fifteen minutes can add years to a life. The gap between an early diagnosis and a late one is often the gap between managing a condition and being managed by it.
That is why National Action Network brought CVS Health to Harlem. Not to a clinic across town that requires a day off work and a bus transfer, but to the church, where people already are, among people they already trust. Blood pressure. Glucose. Cholesterol. Body mass. A conversation with someone who will look you in the eye and tell you the truth about your numbers.
Health care is a civil rights issue. You cannot fight for a community's future while its people are dying early from things we know how to prevent.
National Action Network
Screenings at Mother AME Zion Church, the temporary House of Justice, brought care to where the community already gathers.
The House of Justice, Wherever It Stands
Mother AME Zion Church is serving as the temporary House of Justice while NAN's permanent home is completed. It is fitting. The Black church has always been more than a sanctuary. It has been a school, a union hall, an organizing floor, and a clinic. Bringing screenings into that space continues a tradition older than any of us.
Inside the Project Health mobile unit. Rev. Sharpton with the CVS Health team that ran screenings throughout the day.
The work does not stop at one screening. Know your numbers. Bring a neighbor. Ask the question you have been avoiding. The movement has always understood that survival is the first act of resistance.
