In today’s top news, Porgy and Bess wins the Tony award for best musical revival, Atlanta pastor Creflo Dollar seeks to clear up reports that he punched his teenage daughter in a scuffle last week and police are searching for the shooter who killed three and wounded three others near Auburn University this weekend.

Porgy and Bess wins the Tony Award for best musical revival. [AP]

Atlanta pastor Creflo Dollar seeks to clear up reports that he punched his teenage daughter in a scuffle last week. [CNN]

Three people were shot and killed and three others were wounded  at an apartment complex near Auburn University Saturday. [MSNBC]

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defends stop-and-frisk before a Black congregation Sunday. [NYT]

UNC is fighting allegations of academic fraud after football players were enrolled in an African-American studies course that was never taught. [RNO]

Exonerated of a rape charge, Brian Banks will accept a tryout offer from the Seattle Seahawks. [AP]

Police are looking for the person who shot and killed 19-year-old rapper Lil Phat in Atlanta. [BET]

Mary J. Blige announced she will play Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz, in an upcoming film. [BET]

Study: Majority of Blacks with hypertension harbor hidden heart disease. [NewsMedical]

Boko Haram strikes two Nigerian churches leaving seven dead. [BBC]

With all the pressures of everyday life – particularly in these tough economic times – African Americans as a group are putting little emphasis on their blood pressure and condition of their heart, according to the National Association of Black Cardiologists. In a new, scientific study on the priorities of Black people, nearly two-thirds of those with high blood pressure said they worry more about their jobs and finances than they do about their health. More than half of those with hypertension, 55 percent, reported being more stressed about their financial situation now than they were a year ago, compared to 28 percent who were feeling more anxiety about their health now than 12 months ago. And of the 75 percent of African Americans with high blood pressure who were aware of a family history of blood pressure before they were diagnosed, 59 percent did not take any steps to keep their blood pressure down before their own diagnosis. The study is part of an education campaign, “My Pressure Points,” to encourage Black people to place their blood pressure and cardiovascular health at a higher priority. African Americans are more likely to develop hypertension any other racial or ethnic group, and often to a more severe extent. High blood pressure is the trigger for heart attacks, stroke, organ failure, kidney disease, and has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

One in 100 Black men and women develop heart disease before age 50, a rate 20 times higher than in Whites, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. That study, which followed more than 5,000 18- to 30-year-olds over a two-decade period, found that all but one of the 27 study participants who developed heart failure was black. “In the past, heart failure was thought to be a disease of older people,” said Dr. Kelly McCants, a heart failure and transplant specialist at Jewish Hospital. “But often, we see it in young Black males … and a lot of it is preventable.” While doctors aren’t sure why such startling disparities exist, they point to such likely culprits as elevated rates of high blood pressure – often triggered by poverty, which can lead to unhealthy diets and less access to quality health care. The study is one of the latest examining racial differences in heart failure, which affects 5 million Americans.

People who have a tough time getting their zzzzzzzz could be facing a serious health risk. The notion that insomnia is a minor health risk that doesn’t require major attention is a big mistake, says two new studies. “The message is that insomnia is not a minor problem that can be ignored,” says Dr. Alexandros N. Vgontzas, director of the Center for Sleep Disorder Medicine at Penn State University. “Our results are novel because for the first time they show that insomnia is associated with a high risk for hypertension. Until now, only sleep apnea has been associated with high blood pressure.” Vgontzas and his colleagues discovered that people who have been suffering with insomnia for a year or more and who get less than five hours of sleep per night are five times as likely to have high blood pressure as those who get at least six hours of sleep. People with insomnia who slept five to six hours a night were three-and-a-half times as likely to have high blood pressure as insomnia-free sleepers who snoozed for at least six hours a night. In the second study, a team led by Dr. Marcin Wojnar, of the Department of psychiatry at the University of Michigan looked for a link between insomnia and suicidal behavior in 5,692 participants in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), a representative sample of the general population. Looking at the previous year, the researchers found that people with sleep problems – such as difficulty falling asleep or maintaining sleep, or early-morning awakening – nearly every night were about twice as likely to report suicidal thoughts, suicide planning, or an actual suicide attempt as those with no sleep problems. For example, about 21 percent of people said they had problems falling asleep (as opposed to waking early or in the middle of the night), and of those people 109 had suicidal thoughts (7.9 percent of people with this type of insomnia), 39 had planned a suicide attempt (2.8 percent), and 26 had made a suicide attempt (1.8 percent). In those who didn’t have trouble falling asleep, the percentages were 1.6 percent, 0.3 percent, and 0.2 percent, respectively. The results were presented this week at the World Psychiatric Association meeting in Florence, Italy, and published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. Although certain mental illnesses like depression can cause insomnia, Wojnar says, the link seemed to exist even after the researchers took into account depression, anxiety, alcohol, substance abuse, or chronic physical illness. “Association between sleep problems and suicidality seems to be fully independent of potentially underlying disease,” he says. “Sleep difficulties pose unique risks for suicidal thought, plans, and attempts.”

Celebs are lining up for HIV testing
On National HIV Testing Awareness Day, Hollywood celebrities and activists are lining up to touch 1 million lives. That’s the number of people Hollywood’s Black elite hope to encourage to take an HIV test so they know their status. Led by the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, The Sentinel newspaper, the NAACP, SCLC and other groups and the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, “Test 1 Million” campaign participants also include, Jimmy Jean-Louis (“Heroes”), Tasha Smith (“Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married”), rapper Coolio, Harold Perrineau (“Lost”), Al Reynolds, Darius McCrary (“Family Matters”), Erica Hubbard (“Lincoln Heights”), Oren Williams (“Lincoln Heights”), Zachary Williams (“Roswell,” “The Parkers”), Nicki Micheaux (“Lincoln Heights”), Tequan Richmond (“Everybody Hates Chris”), Landon Brown (“Rock the Cradle”), Nicole Lyons (first female to race professionally in the NHRA Pro Stock and NASCAR Busch Series), recording artist Bobby Tinsley, Brian White (“The Family Stone”, “Stomp the Yard” and “The Game Plan”), NBA veteran Doug Christie & his wife Jackie, Terrel Tilford, Victoria Platt-Tilford, singer Jody Watley, Tasha Smith (“Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married”), Jazmin Lewis (“Barber Shop,” “Good News”), Trenyce (“American Idol” Season 2), Melvin Jackson Jr. Frantz St. Louis (“The Shield,” “Law & Order”), comedian Geoff Brown and : “Eric “Lil E” Wright.” The group will call on 1 million Black Americans to get tested for HIV in the next year. So, what will you do to stamp out HIV/AIDS? And, can you really tell if someone has the disease? Read more at Vital Signs.

Men, Especially Blacks, more often miss their own hypertension
Sure, you think you’re in good health, and that you’ve got it going on. But American men are much more likely than women to be unaware that they suffer from high blood pressure, a new study suggests. And African-American men with the condition are at the highest risk, with only one in seven aware of their illness and able to control it through medication. “The explanation of the disparity, while not clear, isn’t closely associated with perceived discrimination at the doctor’s office, which is a good thing,” said study lead author Ronald Victor, M.D. “The differences also don’t appear to be associated with lack of knowledge about the disease.” Instead, other factors appear to be at work, reports HealthDay.com. Both Whites and Blacks who think they are in good health are especially likely to fail to treat their high blood pressure or even realize they have it, said Victor, chief of the hypertension division at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Researchers have long known that African Americans are at higher risk of developing high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, Victor said. The condition can lead to a variety of ills, including heart attacks, stroke and kidney failure. Still, many have long referred to high blood pressure as the “silent killer” because it often has no outward symptoms. In the new study, designed to examine the causes of the racial disparity, researchers interviewed 1,194 African-American and 320 White adults from the Dallas area between 2000 and 2002 and took consecutive measurements of their blood pressures. No Latinos or members of other racial groups took part in the study. Compared to those without regular doctors, study participants who had a regular physician were almost four times more likely to be aware of their high blood pressure, eight times more likely to undergo related treatment and five times more likely to have the condition under control. Among people with high blood pressure, those who believed they were healthy were “one-third as likely to know they’ve got the condition, half as likely to be treated and two-thirds as likely to have their blood pressure controlled” compared to those who did not believe they were healthy, Victor said. Among both sexes and races, African-American women with hypertension were the most likely to know they had the condition, Victor said. Eighty percent of them were aware, and a third had their condition under control. The findings make sense to Dawn Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of South Carolina who studies hypertension. Ethnic minorities and the poor often have misperceptions about the health-care system and might actually be aware that they are unhealthy, but deny it because they do not have enough money, she said. Study author Victor suggested doing more to educate men about the importance of regular health checkups. “There’s no such thing as a ‘well-man’ exam, and maybe that’s the issue,” he said. “In our society, women learn to become health conscious in terms of preventive health care, and men don’t have that kind of emphasis from a young age.” The study appears in the June 23 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.