New program offers heart care after incarceration

hpherald.com · Feb 21, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

Full Article

Every year, more than 20,000 people leave Illinois prisons, many facing challenges that extend far beyond finding stable housing and employment. For Black men in particular, those challenges include a sharply elevated risk of heart attacks and strokes, driven by years of confinement, poor nutrition and the chronic stress of incarceration and reentry. A 2021 study found that incarceration was associated with a 65% higher mortality rate among Black Americans.Now, a partnership between University of Chicago Medicine and Lawndale Christian Health Center aims to address these dire health outcomes with a new program that treats heart disease not just as a medical problem but as one inextricably tied to the social conditions shaping people’s lives. “In the U.S., health insurance is still primarily tied to employment, and having a history of incarceration makes it so much harder to find permanent jobs — particularly jobs with living wages and benefits so that people can afford safe places to live, have regular medical care and the time needed to engage in health-promoting behaviors such as physical activity,” said Monica Peek, a UChicago Medicine internist and Ellen H. Block Professor for Health Justice of Medicine, who is co-directing the initiative.The program, funded by a five-year, $1.75 million grant from the Merck Foundation, will be based in North Lawndale and aims to engage approximately 250 patients per year who have been involved with the criminal justice system. It will provide integrated care to patients regardless of insurance status and is open to residents from any neighborhood, addressing not only high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol but also patients’ social needs, including food insecurity, housing and employment.The collaboration is the first time the two institutions have worked together. Peek and her team at UChicago Medicine bring expertise in health disparities research and evaluation, while Lawndale Christian operates a network that includes seven federally qualified health centers, a pharmacy, fitness center, produce prescription program and community reintegration support.“We’re relying on each other’s strengths,” Peek said. “The infrastructure that Lawndale Christian has is so perfect, and the expertise in health disparities at University of Chicago is so deep.”The partnership came about through Dr. Elizabeth Tung, a former Lawndale intern who went on to become an associate professor of medicine and social epidemiologist at UChicago Medicine. About two years ago, Tung connected Peek with Wayne Detmer, Lawndale Christian’s chief clinical officer and operational lead for the initiative, telling them they should meet. “I was tremendously honored when that happened,” Detmer said. Peek was equally enthusiastic about the collaboration.“I have loved his work from afar for years,” she said.For Detmer, the partnership represents a chance to create something new for a population that has long been overlooked.“We’re hoping this grant will help us implement a new model of care to address specific challenges facing people transitioning back to our neighborhood, because the current model of care isn’t working,” he said. Detmer has worked and lived in the North Lawndale neighborhood with his family for 27 years, and over that time watched as the life expectancy gap between North Lawndale residents and those living in affluent areas like the Loop widened, despite extensive efforts to improve access to care.“Access to health care is very important,” Detmer said. “But that, in and of itself, is not moving the needle.”The realization has led Lawndale Christian to expand beyond traditional clinical services over the years. In 2008, the health center built a state-of-the-art fitness center. And in 2018, Lawndale Christian partnered with Chicago Botanic Garden to create a large urban farm. Last year, the farm prescribed 27,000 boxes of vegetables to its patients gratis.Lawndale Christian has also dramatically expanded its work in homeless shelters. Last February, the city asked the health center to increase its presence from 15 shelters to all 40 in Chicago. The health center now also maintains a major presence at the Shelter Placement and Resource Center, the city’s main triage center for people experiencing homelessness, many of whom were previously incarcerated.The new program will operate from a renovated Walgreens building that Lawndale Christian purchased on Homan Avenue and Roosevelt Road, one of three Walgreens locations that closed in the area in recent years. The site will house both a walk-in clinic and a pharmacy, allowing patients who have been released from incarceration to immediately establish care and fill prescriptions for blood pressure medications or other drugs they may have been taking.“I’ve seen patients who’ve been discharged from jail or prison knowing that they have high blood pressure or diabetes but did not have their medications,” Detmer said. “Step one for us is to create the simplest way for them to access care.”Peek brings to the partnership years of experience studying how to tailor health interventions to the lived experiences of marginalized communities. Her work has focused largely on diabetes, which she sees as a way to study how social environments, built environments, neighborhood policies and personal resources all intersect to shape health outcomes.For that reason, treatment plans, she said, “have to feel like it is part of who and what they are in order for people to want to embrace it.”Peek also spoke about the importance of creating spaces where people feel valued, particularly for communities that have historically experienced medical mistreatment, such as the 40-year Tuskegee Study, in which Black participants were denied widely available treatment for syphilis — a disease that, left untreated, can damage the heart, brain or other organs.“We have to go above and beyond to bridge those chasms that we have sort of created to say this time, when you open the door, what you’re going to find is love and respect,” Peek said.The program, which is expected to begin in May, will measure its success not just through clinical markers like blood pressure and cholesterol levels but also through process measures like patient engagement and satisfaction. Both Detmer and Peek hope that if successful, the treatment model can be scaled to help other vulnerable populations suffering from cardiovascular issues.“We’re doing this for the very people who we want to help but also because we’re interested more broadly in the populations across the country who are living these very same experiences,” Peek said.