- Coming up, we have a wonderful episode of "American Black Journal" for you.

An organization that strengthens and supports African American families is marking a big anniversary.

We're gonna talk with the CEO of Black Family Development.

Plus, we'll tell you about a new program that's providing healthy, affordable food choices right here in Detroit in convenience stores.

Stay where you are.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

- [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 & 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.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson.

Black Family Development is celebrating 46 years of providing counseling and support services to children and families here in Detroit.

The agency was created in 1978 by the Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Social Workers.

Over the years, it's evolved to meet the needs of the community and its mission to provide safe, nurturing homes, schools, and neighborhoods.

I spoke with the CEO, Kenyatta Stephens, about the agency's history, its longevity, and its future.

Let's start by just talking about Black Family Development and its history.

How did this organization get started?

- Well, thank you Stephen, for asking.

Black Family Development was started in 1978 by Detroit social workers and leaders in human services, who themselves were very keen on the needs of African Americans, particularly Detroiters, in this community, and really sought to develop a comprehensive family counseling agency that specialized in the needs of people of color.

And so as we think about where we've come from now, 46 years later, we still predominantly serve those persons of color, but we serve everybody, and we do so with evidence-based practices, now having grown to over 20 programs, really, again, specializing in counseling and advocacy services for those in need.

- Yeah.

Let's talk about the kinds of things that bring people to Black Family Development and the kinds of services you offer.

It's a very broad range, of course, because there are many challenges that families and people face here in the city.

- Yes, yes, thank you.

You know, we're actually a multi-service organization in the era where a lot of organizations have chosen to specialize in one particular area, whether it's foster care or adoption.

We have chosen to maintain really a no-wrong-door approach for families, because families who come to us are often facing generational hurdles, whether it's meeting basic needs, whether it's situations where across generations, a child or two has been removed because of allegations of child abuse or neglect.

We also are a provider of mental health prevention and treatment.

And that makes us unique because we really recognize that mental health is a challenge happening across this community, across the nation.

But what we find it important to do is to activate our staff amongst 37 schools within Detroit and Wayne County, so that we can be in the place that most families and students recognize as a safety net at school.

And so if we are there providing support to students and to administrators and teachers helping to reduce childhood separations from education environments, we're also building relationships.

And so it's nice to get ahead of some of the mental health challenges that we know are so common amongst our students now, and hopefully do that before the need for treatment, but we're there to provide treatment as well.

So, those are some of the avenues.

Schools, referrals by word of mouth.

And of course, through some of our funders, we work in partnership with Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, the city of Detroit, and a vast number of others that certainly will make referrals to us for a plethora of needs, from homelessness to juvenile justice, substance abuse, and even the Michigan Department of Corrections.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I wanna talk a little about the emphasis here on family.

Obviously, it's part of your title, but it's also the way that you render the work, this idea of strengthening and building that initial support that people have in their lives and need in their lives in order to thrive.

Talk about why family is so important not just in the Black community, but in every community, and the ways in which your work focuses specifically on building those families.

- Yes, family is the first institution of stability and safety for children.

It is an inbred safety net, and it should be an inbred safety net.

And sometimes, we recognize in circumstances as people are trying to make ends meet, and sometimes risks occur.

And it's not always that safety net, but our intention is to work with whatever that family structure is and how it's represented by each family that comes in is different.

But to really create that safety net so that the children in that household know that there is emotional safety, that there's physical safety, that there's a safety to dream.

Stephen, what we find is that children are so subject to often the circumstances in their environment, and so their ability to dream is predicated on them feeling safe.

And so when families come here to Black Family Development, what we try to do from the moment they walk in and they see a receptionist, Ms. Lolita, or they hear her voice if they're on the phone, that they feel a sense of warmth and invitation because we want this to be a place of hope and healing.

That's the first step.

And then as they begin to work with us and they allow us to partner with them and entrust our services with them to help us together achieve their goals, what we try to do is address, you know, thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, basic needs, food, shelter, clothing.

And then from there, really begin to explore: What are their dreams for themselves?

Are they career-related, are they just mental-health-related, or are there dreams for their children?

Even trying to link some of our families with our boys and young men of color work so that they are put on a pathway to think about their own futures and move towards post-secondary attainment.

And so really, it's helping them through a safety net that we try to create with them.

Not for them, but with them, here in the organization.

So that if, as caregivers, as the adult caregivers in the family, they feel a sense of stability, then they are better able to achieve what you or I would want for our own children.

Our families are no different.

We just wanna provide the grounds for them to succeed and sometimes fail because failure is a part of all of our experiences in life, but we wanna do that in partnership together and provide resources in the process.

- Yeah, yeah.

I wanna hear a little about current challenges and how they are different from things in the past.

Of course, the pandemic changed lots of things for lots of people, I would imagine that for your organization, and a lot more things changed or had to change.

But of course, we're four years from that now.

I'm curious about, I guess, the lingering effects of that or challenges that still kind of push you in a different direction.

- Absolutely, that's a great question.

And I think many of us in the nonprofit space are really still accounting the cost, perhaps, is the term to use for what all of this globe, let alone folks in underserved communities, experienced as a result of COVID.

I think one of the major situational changes has been this real emphasis on trying to debunk the stigma of mental health because the increase in suicidality is impacting all communities, all people.

African Americans are no different.

In fact, they've seen, and depending on the research you look at, there's been a seven-time increase in terms of suicidality for African American young people, particularly since the pandemic.

And so when we think about the breadth of our services, over the last four years, we moved from a point of serving about 18,000 individuals now to 28,000 individuals because of the increase in the spread or breadth of our mental health services, truly in partnership with Detroit Public Schools and other schools has really made that happen.

And the need has presented itself such that those partners have asked for other partners to work alongside of them to strengthen and enhance young people and their families.

I think another change that we've seen is an increase in just common basic needs.

We were just blessed to work in partnership with the Detroit Pistons, and Meijer, and Gleaners to support a recent Thanksgiving food giveaway.

And the scope of the increase in inflation has really impacted many of our families.

And so for that reason, we find ourselves consistently looking at ways to partner, to bring other kinds of basic needs, household goods, to bear for our families, just to try to decrease that stressor off of their backs.

- Yeah, yeah.

Okay, well, congratulations on 46 years at Black Family Development- - Thank you, thank you.

and all the work that you guys do here in our community.

- Thank you, thank you.

In celebration of our 46 years, we have an upcoming gala that we wanna make sure your viewers are aware of.

And so for those who might be interested in joining us for this celebration, feel free to take a look at our link that we have available through www.supportbfdi.org/2024gala.

- Thanks for being with us.

- Appreciate your time.

- A new program called Healthy and Resilient Communities is bringing healthy, fresh, grab-and-go foods to Detroit area convenience stores and gas stations.

Authority Health developed the three-year initiative in partnership with Papa Joe's Gourmet Market as part of its efforts to educate the community about the relationship between food and health.

The affordable selections include wraps, salads, and fruits.

The program targets seven Detroit ZIP codes and will also include a food truck with healthy food samples.

I got all of the details from Authority Health President and CEO Loretta Bush, and Hannah Harris, who is the Marketing Director for Papa Joe's.

So, Loretta, I wanna start with you, this idea of Healthy and Resilient Communities.

Of course, that has to start with access to fresh food here in the city of Detroit.

That is a longstanding issue.

I can't tell you how many stories I've worked on or read that deal with the fact that if you live here, it can be very challenging to find access to fresh food.

So, tell me about this initiative to essentially put the food in the places where people are already shopping.

- That's exactly it, and what we find is that there is a strong connection between what we eat and drink and chronic disease.

And so that's the first impact that we wanted to have.

But we understand that if you have to go miles and miles to get to fresh fruit, something that's healthy, but also something that's cost effective, it can be very difficult to do what you need to do.

So, with those two things in mind, we thought, "How about we have a strong public-private partnership?"

Which we all talk about, but many times they just don't happen.

We know it's a frontier that we need to do, but many times, we don't do it.

So we were looking at: How do we bring fresh grab-and-go meals right into the community?

Because certainly, there's other grab-and-go foods that aren't quite as healthy.

So that's how we got the concept, if we really wanted to have a different kind of impact, we needed to partner with a different kind of partner.

And that led us to Papa Joe's Gourmet Market for our wholesaler, but then we also started to reach out to liquor stores, convenience stores, dollar stores, and Petro-Marts, because those things are already based in the community, right?

So we didn't have to try to recreate a venue, but just bring a different type of product to an existing venue.

- Yeah, yeah.

So Hannah, tell me about Papa Joe's kind of interest in something like this, but then also what a grab-and-go meal, I guess, looks like, and how you put that together so that it works in a venue that's not a full-service grocery store.

- Absolutely, so first of all, Papa Joe's, we strive to be healthy, fresh, the best product that we can be.

And that is really ingrained in our food and our entire process.

Being in Oakland County, we know that these food deserts do exist, and we've been trying to bridge that gap and get more involved in the community.

So, this partnership and how this developed was just truly kind of a godsend.

And when it comes to food today, there's a lot going on with what's real food and what's fake food.

We have all seen it online.

And Papa Joe's, we are the definition of real food.

We have a whole chef-led kitchen, where we have people rinsing and cleaning lettuce to put together wraps, sandwiches, salads.

There's no bio-engineered food here; it's real people making real food.

And we already have a grab-and-go system in our stores, so this was really quite easy and refreshing to implement.

Once Authority Health approached us, I'm like, "We already do this concept now..." - We're doing this, right.

- "We can just share this concept and bring healthy options to communities."

- Yeah, yeah.

Loretta, talk about some of the health challenges that you see at Authority that are related to this food desert kind of existence that we have in Detroit.

And I think that sometimes, it's maybe not a fair description.

There are a lot of people trying to provide fresh food in Detroit, we just don't have enough of it, but make that link between that and the health outcomes that we see.

- Absolutely.

So, one of the things is, as soon as you are diagnosed with a chronic disease, be it hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, your usual cast of characters, the first thing a good physician is gonna talk to you about is what you eat.

- Yeah, what do you eat?

- What you drink, and then also physical activity.

So that's gonna be the first thing.

So the link is there.

If you're hypertensive or trying not to be hypertensive, you're going to have to try to control things like your salt intake.

Obesity is a open door to many of the chronic diseases.

So trying to do weight management, keeping your weight at a healthy weight, all of these things are impacted by food.

Now, I always like to mention that sometimes, people are just dealt a bad hand.

You have a genetic predisposition.

But even if that's the case, what you eat and drink is gonna be still so important.

Maybe even more important.

If you know that something runs in your family, which we all should know, our family history, and hopefully now it's been out, that Thanksgiving dinner talk, Christmas dinner talk, just Sunday get together.

You need to try to find out, "Hey, what did grandma have?

What did dad have?"

So the things that we used to not talk about, we need to talk about them so that we'll know what we're predisposed to.

So, even in that situation, food and drink is gonna be a critical part of living healthy and your longevity.

So, it's just a major connection there.

And you're right, there are providers who are trying to make sure that there's healthy foods out there, but we need more outlets for that.

And especially for that grab-and-go.

So, what does that look like?

It looks like sandwiches, wraps, but not a sandwich that's in white bread.

It's a sandwich that's a nice healthy wrap.

And inside, you have fresh products, fresh chicken, fresh Turkey, salads that are made available, so that someone who has a 30-minute lunch hour can run in there, grab it, and consume it as quickly and as easily as if they went through a drive through and got one of the other things that people are very familiar with.

So, I'm not gonna name them, right- - Right, right.

- We all know what I'm talking about.

- Right.

- So now, you can just drive to the store that's in the neighborhood either where you work or live.

And during COVID is when we really became even more aware of how many people depend on their local liquor store or convenience store for many of their meals and everything.

So we tell people, though, "If you have to open a can or a box before you can see your food, that's processed."

- Right, right, that's not fresh.

- That's not fresh, that's not what you wanna do.

If you have to open a box or a can, 'cause we wanna make it easy for people, then that's not fresh, that's processed.

Now, if you have to get to that sometimes with some green beans or whatever, okay.

But for the most part, you wanna be getting things that are fresh, but it also has to be affordable.

And that's why this relationship with Papa Joe's has been so rewarding 'cause the wholesale price point has to be right and then the retail price point has to be right.

- Sure.

- So that even people who are financially fragile are able to access the food.

- Yeah, yeah.

Hannah, I wanna ask you about maybe the next step here, which would be businesses like Papa Joe's having their own presence in cities like Detroit, in these neighborhoods that are often distanced from fresh food options.

Is this maybe a foot in the door, I guess, for looking at that, yeah?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

This opportunity has really shown us a new connection to food and community on a whole other level.

And watching Authority Health, when we first discussed this and launched this program together, Loretta, we had maybe what, five locations, that has now quickly turned into 15 locations?

- Oh, more than that.

We'll be up to 23 by the end of next week.

(Loretta laughing) - So, it's something that is quickly growing.

And I went out, I was actually in the city yesterday visiting some of these locations.

And the community, you can tell they're buying this, they're using this, they're eating it, they're appreciating it.

And that's so humbling and incredible to see.

And when you're eating good food, that's gonna have an impact on your body, that's gonna have an impact on your mind all around.

Food's at the heart of it.

And this is definitely a great connection and a new light.

- Okay, Loretta and Hannah, congratulations on the work here, and thanks for being with us here on "American Black Journal."

- All right.

Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- Mm-hmm.

Finally today, we wanna send our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Stephen Singleton, a pastoral minister with the Archdiocese of Detroit.

He died last month after being struck by a car while on his daily run in Rochester Hills.

Singleton was a guest here on "American Black Journal" several times over the years.

He shared his story of traveling to New York to volunteer on the search and rescue team after the 9/11 tragedy.

On another occasion, he talked about the 5K run he organized to raise money for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

He also joined us to reflect on his participation in the 2014 Justice for All March in Washington D.C. Stephen Singleton was 72 years old.

We thank him for his contributions and his compassion.

That'll 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.

(upbeat 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 & 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.

(uplifting music)