As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, former Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens wide receiver and kick returner Jacoby Jones suddenly died in his sleep at 40 years of age. Now, a report from the Orleans Parish Medical Examiner has revealed why.
According to the Houston Chronicle, Jones, who was found dead in his New Orleans home on July 14, three days after turning 40, died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease. As the name implies, that particular disease usually occurs after having unmanaged high blood pressure for a long period. High blood pressure places strain on a person’s heart, which can lead to heart failure.
In the days following Jones’ death, Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans, a teammate of Jones’, described to the Chronicle what he remembered most fondly about his former teammate.
“You talk about a guy who was a
fun-spirited, loving, caring, great teammate, dance machine,” Ryans began, “He was fun to be around, lit up any room that he walked into with his great spirit, and he’ll be truly missed. I was very saddened to hear the news of him passing. Just truly feel sorry for the family and for all of his teammates, all the lives he’s touched. Jacoby, I remember he always did a great job of working camps and working with kids, and he always did an excellent job of doing that. He’ll be missed.”According to the Cleveland Clinic, though the rates of heart disease vary based on the specific diagnosis, it is generally understood that Black men have a 70% higher risk of heart failure compared to white men.
According to the clinic, social factors or social determinants are drivers of the health disparities affecting Black people and, in the case of heart failure, specifically, Black men.In February, NBC News examined the potential connection between a lack of Black cardiologists and the fact that Black people are the most likely to die from heart disease. The outlet talked to Elston Harris, a Black man who lives in Chicago with a history of heart attacks in his family, who was referred to a Black cardiologist.
Harris described his feelings to NBC News, “When you are African American or Black, you’re more comfortable interacting with someone who knows, ‘OK, he might have grew up here, or he might eat this, or I heard them do that.’ So, you’re a lot more comfortable with people who walk in similar footsteps.”
Harris’s experience, the outlet noted, is rare as only 3% of cardiologists are Black,
something that Dr. Mary Branch, a Black, North Carolina-based cardiologist, explained was due not only to the long and arduous path of becoming a doctor of cardiology but racism and intolerance as well as economic factors.Branch also touched on the prevalence of high blood pressure in the Black community, saying, “Hypertension is a big thing in our community,” According to Dr. Branch, a Black cardiologist may also be on hypertension medication, “so they can relate and connect in that way.”
According to a 2022 study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, part of what could be helping to exacerbate high blood pressure is a false directive that Black people with high blood pressure should be treated differently from other ethnicities.
As Hunter K. Holt, a medical doctor and a primary author of the study,
told UCSF, “Race provides a poor proxy for precision medicine. Our study provides evidence that race-based prescribing is ineffective, unwarranted, and may even be detrimental to Black patients in the long run.”Holt continued, “Race-based guidelines distract clinicians from providing targeted interventions that address known social determinants of health and from addressing implicit biases that disproportionately and negatively impact Black patients. Now is the time for more research to better understand whether the guidelines that were intended to rectify the racial health disparities may actually be further contributing to the divide.”
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