- Coming up on American Black Journal.

A nonprofit organization is making vision care accessible to underserved communities.

We're gonna talk with the founder of Eye Care for Detroit.

Plus, we'll talk with a cybersecurity expert about her career journey, and getting more African-Americans interested in the industry.

Stay where you are.

American Black Journal starts right now.

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Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to American Black Journal.

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

April is National Minority Health Month, and that's a time to draw attention to the health disparities that affect minority communities and promote actions to improve health outcomes.

My first guest is doing just that.

Dr. Cleamon Moorer Jr. founded Eye Care for Detroit.

Now, that's a nonprofit that's helping home-bound and underserved residents get access to vision care.

The organization operates the city's first walk-in eyecare clinic and a mobile unit that services patients in their homes.

I'd like to welcome Dr. Moorer to American Black Journal.

Great to have you here.

- Thank you, Stephen.

Pleasure to be here.

- Yeah, so, you know, when we think about healthcare and healthcare challenges, I mean, you know, there's no question that in cities like Detroit, in the African-American community, they are more acute than they are in other places.

But I'm not sure that we always are thinking about the total health picture, right?

We're thinking about access to primary care in most instances, but eyecare is just as important.

- Yes, it is.

- Talk about the work that you're doing just to make sure that folks here have access to good eyecare.

- Absolutely, Stephen, thank you.

So it seems that vision care is often back burner in a lot of people's healthcare journey, where a person has a reaction to a comorbidity.

"Blood pressure's a little high.

My numbers have exceeded their thresholds, and now my vision is blurry.

What should I do," right?

So we want to educate and engage the local community in the importance of vision care so that it's not reactive, but more so proactive.

Similar to, you know, children starting their first day at school.

Just get out and talk with seniors.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- How important is that early eye care, you know, to children, to young people as they get, you know, older into adulthood?

- Stephen, it means everything.

Our optometrists and ophthalmologists tell us that if we can detect glaucoma early on, if we could detect early signs of cataracts or macular degeneration, the advancement of those diseases in many cases could be cut off.

- Can be slipped.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Yeah.

- For sure.

- You know, the problems that we have getting people access to eye care, are they kinda part and parcel with regular healthcare access or there are other barriers that also play a role in this one?

- There's other barriers, Stephen.

So there is a shortage of eyecare professionals within the city of Detroit.

So if you look at the ratio of one eyecare professional for every 15,000 to 20,000 Detroiters versus some of our counterparts in Kent County and Oakland County around the state of Michigan that have a one to 1200 or one to 1500 ratio.

- [Stephen] Wow, that's a dramatic difference.

- Absolutely.

Yes, it is.

But there are a lot of retail venues that sell fashionable eyewear.

- Right, which is not the same thing as going to see the eye doctor.

- No, one of our mottos, Stephen, is we definitely care how people look, but more importantly we care how people see.

- How you see, right.

- So let's dive deeper.

Let's dive deeper in and analyze and see if we could diagnose and prevent the progression of eye health disease.

- Yeah, what do you do about that?

How do we attack that problem of, you know, the availability of eyecare?

- Well, mobilizing it has been our solution, right?

Where we understand that due to transportation barriers, lack of access, not knowing where to go, cost, expense, and then of course the sandwich generation, the working adult that needs to take an elderly parent to an eyecare appointment turns into an all day affair.

So we've looked to streamline that process by developing a mobile outfit to go to patients' homes, to go out there in the senior community and cut that, cut that gap.

- Yeah, is that a long-term fix?

- I do believe so.

In the event that we can engage more ophthalmology students from local colleges and universities as well as optometry students into the field to create clinical-based field experiences under licensed optometrists and ophthalmologists.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Certainly.

- Talk about what you're seeing when you're going to, I assume, like senior centers in some cases, or just say patients homes.

How much, is there a gap, I guess, in the share that people are getting?

- Stephen, we are seeing stickier cataracts, for lack of a better phrase, where a person has advanced blindness, legal blindness, due to their cataracts not being removed.

We're seeing mac degeneration to an extent where a person has lost all of their peripheral vision and it's just extremely-- - You can see it straightforward.

- Absolutely.

Very myopic.

And not being able to see what's in front of them, but necessarily what is around them.

- Yeah.

Obviously, for conditions like that, it's not just initial visit, but, you know, long-term care.

- Long-term care and also getting to the loved one or caregiver within that household or community to also try to address vision health or vision care issues.

- Yeah, yeah.

Right.

I mean, you go to see one person, you've got a family.

- It's a family affair.

And everybody needs to go to eyecare.

- Yes, indeed.

- Yeah.

So I wanna have you talk also about your own personal story, which is really inspiring, is how you come to this space.

- Stephen, my own personal journey inspired my work.

I was born with congenital cataracts, which is rare.

However, the cataracts progressed throughout the years.

So growing up in the 80's and into the 90's, my vision progressively got worse.

So by the age of 20 going on 21, hey, I was legally blind.

- Wow.

- Yes.

- So talk about what that was like.

I mean, as a child, how you get to that point?

So imagine, Stephen, a glass of water that has an eye dropper that drops driplets of milk or droplets of milk into that glass.

Over time, with more droplets of milk, the water is cloudy and you're trying to look through a cloudy or opaque vision of whatever's in front of you or around you.

So it progressively got worse.

- Yeah, and you were not able to get care for this?

- No, no.

- What was the reason for that?

My parents had a small business, Livernois, C&M Collision.

You know, Bump n Pay.

- You know, which Detroit and Livernois-- - Lots of businesses like that.

- That's right.

- Right.

- And the small business owner's insurance plan they had did not.

- Did not cover eyecare.

- Did not cover eyecare, let alone eyecare surgery.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- So how common is that that people who have insurance don't get eyecare insurance?

- So it really depends on how the insurance plan is structured.

So granted, if there is a medical issue or a diagnosis, an eyecare professional can see that patient for that medical diagnosis.

If it's not medical per se, and it's a vision plan, it turns into an add-on.

It's an add-on to the regular healthcare.

- Absolutely, so being a healthy kid, you know, growing up, despite some allergies here and there and poor vision, it didn't fall under medical.

- Wow, so what was the solution that your parents found?

- Oh, so my mother, my beloved mother, sought out different funding sources.

She was blessed enough to find the Sinai Grace Guild at the time.

She wrote a letter to the board 'cause I went to Sinai throughout the years.

That's where my eyecare professionals, my ophthalmologists were.

And the board decided to cover the removal.

- Oh, wow.

- Yes, they did.

So forever grateful.

- Yeah.

Is it that generosity that inspires your-- - It fuels it.

- Return to that work.

- It certainly fuels it, Stephen.

I did promise her upon her passing that I would pay it forward and try to help as many Detroiters as possible.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yes.

- I mean, it also is a great lesson.

And the idea of things never really being too late.

It's never too late to do something, right?

You essentially had lost your vision.

- Yes.

- At the age of 21.

- Absolutely.

- But today, you're able to treat other people.

- There you go, that's it.

- Because somebody intervened.

- Totally.

Totally, Stephen.

And so I think the combination of both sympathy and empathy, the sympathy of, "I feel sorry for you.

I understand."

But empathy, "I lived it first hand."

- I've been here.

- Yes.

- How many people are you able to reach with the mobile?

- Yeah, the goal is 40,000.

So we are taking on like 50 to 60 patients or home bound folks a week, you know?

But the aim is to get to all of Detroit's home bound community out there.

- Yeah, and what's the financial support for this that closes that gap for folks that don't have insurance?

- You know, billing, we typically try to bill for those that are insured.

But Stephen, to answer that question, to cover the entire community, we've estimated a fee or a cost of 250 to $300 to get a person a comprehensive exam, a pair eyeglasses, and referrals to specialists.

So covering 40,000 Detroiters is a 10 million to $12 million undertaking.

It certainly is.

- Somebody's gotta step up.

- Somebody has to.

- Yes, and we know that there's a generous philanthropic community within the state of Michigan, as well as the country that could help us fit that bill.

- Yeah, all right.

Dr. Moorer, congratulations on the work.

And thank you very much for being here.

- My pleasure.

Thank you for having me, Stephen.

- Coming up next, we're gonna talk about careers in cybersecurity.

But first, here's a clip from a 1992 Detroit Black Journal episode about the need for cancer awareness in the Black community.

- In the United States this year, 1 million people will be diagnosed with cancer.

But that cancer unfortunately affects the different racial groups disproportionately.

And in our particular racial group or the Black racial group, we are going to see an incredible increase in cancers in breast, lung, and in prostate.

And staggering figures too, for example, with prostate, we are seeing four times the number of patients than in other racial groups.

And with a mortality that is now the highest in the world.

- Highest in the world, I'm gonna kinda jump around here too, Ms. Batiste.

Do we know or have we been able to determine why certain cancers affect Black people disproportionately or impeculiar?

- Well, it's an interesting question because we don't know if it affects them differently.

But we know that access to care is certainly different.

In the black population usually, cancers are not detected until it is quite late.

They've had it for a long time, but they've had no access to care.

There was no place to go to find out if you did or you didn't.

Plus we have, as you know, difficulty with attitudes, listening to Patti LaBelle and her new attitude.

And we definitely must have a new attitude.

We are not taught culturally.

We're not taught to seek care for every little thing nor do we tend to follow through with care.

- So, Ms. Franklin, I'm gonna turn to you now.

If there was one thing that you could initially have Black people in particular start to do in terms of early detection, in terms of eating habits, is there a single causal factor or a single thing that seems to be of the most critical need at this juncture?

- I would say that they would have to definitely have a new attitude about their bodies become body awareness.

- We're talking awareness then.

- That's right.

Because if you think about it actually, when you go to the doctor, he doesn't tell you what's wrong.

You tell him what's wrong.

And how are you going to know if there is a change in your body unless you are aware of your body.

- As technology to expand, so does the need for cybersecurity and cybersecurity experts.

It's a field that's currently only 18% African-American, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

My next guest is a 25-year veteran of the cybersecurity industry, and she's written a book titled, "Breaking the Cyber Code: A Game Changer that Prepares our Workforce and Secures the Future."

I'd like to welcome Sakinah Tanzil to American Black Journal.

Congratulations on your book.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

So let's start by just talking about cybersecurity, why it's so important, and really just kinda how that works.

I think a lot of people think about the passwords that we have on various apps and on accounts.

They think of duo and all of these kinds of secure protocols that we've developed.

But I'm not sure all of us really know what that is and what it means, how it all works.

- Okay.

Yes.

Well, cybersecurity is about protecting people and building trust.

It's about confidentiality, integrity, and availability of that data that businesses and individuals hold.

So you have to put yourself in the shoes of an individual that may lose some money, may lose their social security card, and it gets stolen.

So it's so important.

And the sooner that you know about the safeguards, you can protect yourself and others.

- Yeah, I kinda think of this field as living in two different spaces.

One space is the space that we know about and have interaction with, later what I was talking about with passwords and things like that.

The other is in terms of the data, as you point out, that we all now put out there that we don't have control of, that we don't keep secure, that the people we give that data to have to give real security too.

And that's the part that I feel like we have more to lose, I think on that side of things.

- Yeah, I spend a lot of time in the healthcare industry, and that's the most sensitive data that you can have.

So third parties are vetted before they even get access to medical data, just to make sure that they have their safeguards in place.

And I was responsible for doing assessments to make sure that they're valid vendors.

Because if it was even my information, I look at it if it's mine, I would want that protected too.

So healthcare data, financial data, the grid, the infrastructure, all that is important data that if hackers get a hold of it, they can do malicious things.

- Yeah, let's talk about your career, 25 years in the cyber security industry.

Tell me how you got interested in it and about your path there.

- Yeah, when I was a teenager, I was at home watching the television news, and it was the late-1990s, and they were talking about the Y2K issue coming the year 2000.

The year was gonna turn to 2000 from 1999.

And computers only were set up for two digit years.

So they had to go back and extend it to a four-digit year so it wouldn't crash.

- So it wouldn't think it was 1900, right?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

So when I saw that, I was like, "Wow, it seems like this is a call of duty for me.

Maybe I should enroll myself into college and go into the industry."

So that's exactly what I did.

I enrolled in Henry Ford College and went into their associate program Computer Information Systems.

And I found out about Bill Gates and his software.

I did a presentation and read his book, and I was like, "Wow, I'm in the right industry."

It helps software, helps with space exploration, healthcare, all that.

So I'm in the right place.

So it inspired me to keep going and persevere.

- Yeah, and when you started, talk about how present African-Americans were in the field and how much more present they are now, and then I guess how much more we still have to do.

- Yes, when I enrolled in college back in the late 1990s, I was one of two African-Americans that I seen in the program.

And that was kind of devastating because I was looking for friends that I can be around to help with studying and support groups and all that.

So I did hook up with the other person and we stuck together, we studied together, and we had each other's back, but it was kinda devastating and I was like, "Wow, am I doing the right thing or what?"

So it kinda had me question what I was doing.

But as a Detroiter, we persevere.

We're underdogs and all that, so I learned to just stick it out and I knew I was doing the right thing.

- Yeah, in the time that you've worked in the industry, that presence has changed.

I mean, the 18%, roughly the percentage of African-Americans that exist in the country, or maybe a little more.

- Yes, and that's part of what I've been doing.

I've been mentoring, I've been coaching, I've been advocating, training young people, because you should start as early as kindergarten.

You know, K through 12, because I got exposure in college.

But the earlier you start and you see people like you, then you're inspired and you see the possibilities.

So that's what I'm doing now, is trying to build a legacy and invest in the young people to fill that gap.

Because right now, there's a shortage.

There's 4.8 million cybersecurity professionals needed globally and 265,000 just in the US.

So we need to fill that gap because these are high-skill, high-paying jobs, and they can change the trajectory of your life.

- Yeah, let's talk about your book and what readers will learn about cybersecurity and its importance from the book.

- Yes, well, it's a memoir slash guidebook.

So I walk you through all the challenges that I went through.

Things like how to negotiate your salary or unconscious bias or being resilient.

And then I talk about the 52 careers in cybersecurity, and I talk about the skills and the knowledge that you need to have.

So you look at it and you say, "Where do I fit?

What do I wanna go after?"

I talk about scholarships that you can get to help pay for college, and I just coach you through things that you probably need help with it.

And no one probably is there to help you with, and I'm here as a labor of love writing this book to be the person I needed when I was younger.

- Yeah, for young people, I mean, so much of their lives revolve around and are affected by tech.

But they're natives to this in a way that like I wasn't, and maybe you weren't.

In other words, when we were much younger, we didn't have these things and we had to adapt.

We had to kinda learn.

Do they have an advantage because of that now?

Is it easier to sort of, I guess, engage in an academic way with this kind of material?

Because you've spent your whole life swiping on your phone or on your iPad and everything is about passwords and access.

Their home in this space is much more familiar, I feel like.

And so maybe that is an opportunity to get more people involved.

- Yes, when my daughter was two years old, she's 20 now, as soon as she can sit up, I got her involved in technology because I wanted her to have access.

And they have this innate sense to already know how to use it.

So that's an advantage, you know?

But I don't just want you to be a consumer of tech.

I want you to understand the basics, the foundation, the principles, all that, and how to protect yourself.

I think every K through 12 student needs to know about cyber education and how to protect themselves because there's bad actors out there.

And in social media, you have to protect yourself and protect your kids.

So parents need to be involved.

They need to know the safeguards are in place because people are out there and they're trying to get our young people in their minds.

So, you have to protect them.

- Is cybersecurity making us more secure over time?

Or are the people, these bad actors you're talking about, moving faster than cybersecurity is?

And are we more at risk because, you know, it seems like with each passing day, we are more involved in a tech way with each other and our data.

- Yeah, well, the bad guys are one step ahead.

- Are they?

- They're reading the books.

They're thinking in a bad way.

We're using it for fun and work and all that and they're looking at ways of how to take advantage-- - To get our money.

- Yeah, yeah.

So they're one step ahead.

So if you're not careful, you can be taken advantage of.

So technology is a tool, and if you use it right, it can improve your life.

But it also has bad sides, too.

So you have to know both sides of it to protect yourself.

So I wouldn't say that we're more at risk, but with Deepfakes and misinformation and disinformation, you have to go to vetted sources.

And if you're going to the wrong chat room or social media platform, then you might get influenced by that.

And so you have to be careful.

- Yeah, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about AI and its effect on this part of technology.

It's really moving very fast in terms of what's possible, what people may be capable of because of AI.

There's a good side of that.

And then of course, there's a threat.

From your chair though, what do you see in terms of the changes that AI is kind of forcing on cybersecurity in particular?

- Yeah, I was a little hesitant at first when I was working for organizations and them bringing on AI because there's certain things that you have to know upfront, and you have to do a risk assessment and know what data you have and what data you wanna use.

So I do appreciate AI, but you have to be really careful.

There's a lot of risk involved and there's a standard on risk assessments that the government has provided to kinda help people.

But it's a tool.

But like the internet and like social media, if you don't use it right, there's risk involved, so you need to know that.

So I am a promoter of AI, but I think it's moving too fast and there's not enough controls in place.

So you need to implement it slowly and in phases before you fully implement it and give it control.

Because you're still gonna need human intelligence, critical thinking skills, so don't let that go to the wayside.

- Yeah, okay.

Sakinah, it was really great to have you here, and congratulations again on your book.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

That's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care.

And we'll see you next time.

(bright music) - [Announcer 1] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer 2] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Announcer 1] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and Viewers Like You.

Thank you.

(bright music)