local news
Wealth
continued from page 1
that has been successful in Silicon Valley.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel;
we’re trying to say, ‘Hello! This communi-
ty wants to be a part of this.’ We are focus-
ing on the solution to job growth and wealth
creation in urban sectors…our first goal is
to create a $10 million investment fund that
will target urban innovation.”
The civil rights movement fought
momentous legal and constitutional battles
to secure equal rights for all under the law.
But, with large numbers of African
Americans stuck in unemployment and
poverty, the economic battle remains to be
won.
That’s why creating a culture that sup-
ports technology investment and growth,
will take more than education, Green says.
Black Americans specifically, are discon-
nected from the structures that create wealth
in America.
Of the 1.9 million Black businesses, 1.8
million are sole proprietors and unlikely to
deliver the rapid job that will change the
state of play.
“High-growth entrepreneurship is where
job growth occurs,” Green says. “And
Black America has innovators; they are out
there beating the bushes for capital.”
A dedicated fund and a network of
African American venture capitalists and
‘angels’ could do more to support Black
innovators, he says.
The Nielsen report on African American
consumer spending found that Black
Americans have nearly a trillion in spending
power, Green notes.
Hear Mike Green in
person at The Skanner
Foundations’s 26th
annual Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
Breakfast
“The question is why are we are we not
investing some of that trillion in our own
innovators, in our own high-growth sector.”
This isn’t about adding debt, he stressed.
It’s not about loans from banks or the Small
Business Administration. Venture capitalists
and angels take risks on startup businesses
in exchange for a share of the profits.
Government can create a few jobs, but it
can’t do the work of private investors who
finance in new ideas and technologies. And
that’s where the real growth is. Green says.
The next big step for the ‘The America 21
Project’ is a two-day forum planned for Nov
15 and 16 at Rutgers University. Organized
in partnership with the university’s Center
for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic
Development, in Newark, NJ, the forum
seeks to bring together high-net worth (or
rich to me and you) people, to discover
what it means to become a venture capital-
ist or angel, and to hear success stories.
“We’re issuing a call to action,” said
Green. “We’re calling on high net worth
individuals – Black, Brown or anybody
interested in urban innovation. We want
them to be at Rutgers November 15th and
16th.
“We need Black folks to step up to the
plate and say ‘I can write a check for $500
or $1000. We know if we have trillion in
spending power that we can afford to focus
in on Urban Enterprise and job growth.”
Everyone, in fact, can do something to
support wealth creation and job growth in
minority communities, Green said. Students
can aspire to becoming technology innova-
Mike Green
tors and inventors. Everyone can encourage
youth to study and excel in the STEM sub-
jects: Science, Technology, Engineering and
Math.
“We have hills to climb in ensuring our
children have support to have a STEM edu-
cation,” he says.
If Green can raise $10,000 in the next 5-7
days, Oregonians in Portland and Salem
may get a sneak preview of a CNN film on
the issue and Green’s presentation. He’s
working with Willamette University, the
Urban League and the Urban Entrepreneurs
Network to host simultaneous events, Nov
8, in Salem and Portland.
Carter
continued from page 1
Deputy Director for Human Services
Programs at the Oregon Department of
Human Services.
In 1989, she was instrumental in
establishing the Cascade Campus Skill
Center, which was renamed in her honor
in 2007.
“I came to PCC and moved on,” she
‘Sen. Carter’s history with the college and the
campus is deep and abiding, and it’s only
fitting that we name a building in her honor’
-- PCC Cascade President Algie Gatewood
said. “My children came to PCC and
moved on. My grandchildren came to PCC
and moved on. And with 15 great-grand-
children, I am sure that PCC will help gen-
erate educational opportunities for a third
generation of my family. Kudos to PCC
and its ‘opportunity thinking.’”
Pain
continued from page 1
developing permanent, chronic pain as a
result of either failure to diagnose in a time-
ly fashion or being diagnosed inappropri-
ately. And so the goal of the talk was basi-
cally to empower patients, give them infor-
mation so that they could make smart deci-
sions about their healthcare and letting them
know that, yes sometimes it can be difficult
to get in to see a specialist such as a neuro-
surgeon but there are some that are readily
available. I count myself among them.
TSN: What would you say in your experi-
ence is the most common source of neck
pain that you treat?
Roberts: I would say the majority of peo-
ple that we see in clinic typically fall into
one of two categories: either they’ve got a
past history of being involved in a car acci-
dent or having a similar kind of other
whiplash-involved injury. And what will
happen is they will have the injury, and they
won’t have significant pain or they won’t
have any numbness or weakness, and so in
a lot of cases they don’t get evaluated and
then a year or two years later they develop a
recurrence of the symptoms – a worsening
pain, and then at that point, they go in to see
their primary care or physical therapist, and
then you get referred over. That’s one cate-
gory.
Another category of people that spend a
lot of time working at a desk, flexing their
neck as they’re working at a computer, or
otherwise turning their neck in a way that
they’re having a repetitive injury as a result.
And so those are the two broad categories
we see with neck pain.
Also, too, headache can be associated
with neck pain, so we’ll also see people
who have been diagnosed with either
migraine headache or chronic headache,
and that also turns out to be coming from
their neck. And so again, most people need
to be diagnosed appropriately.
TSN: So I get that there are a lot of peo-
ple out there who think that it’s no big deal,
even if it goes on for a long time.
Roberts: Precisely. And what’ll happen,
people will come to accept daily pain. And
that’s one of the other messages that I was
TSN: And I bet that there are so many
people out there who are afraid of the doc-
tor, who are afraid of going to the doctor.
But what I hear you saying is that people are
trading off their chronic pain just for the
fear of being treated.
Roberts: Correct, and I think that is defi-
nitely true. That is actually something that
specialists such as myself need to work on
in terms of community engagement and let-
‘I would say over 50 percent of the people I see
tend to have had the symptoms for years’
trying to deliver to the community, is that it
is not normal to have pain and headache on
a regular basis. That is something that peo-
ple get accustomed to, they accept it, and
unfortunately it doesn’t go away. I would
say over 50 percent of the people I see tend
to have had the symptoms for years. It’s
unfortunate because that’s a period of time
when perhaps they would have been able to
live free of pain and not have to deal with
some of those issues.
It’s really amazing when you see someone
who’s had pain for years and years and
years, and you diagnose them and treat
them, and the pain goes away. The look on
their face is unmistakable. They think, wow,
I just wasted – not wasted, but I just spent
the last four years dealing with this prob-
lem, now it’s all gone, and it would have
been great to have had this treated at the
beginning.
ting people know that just because you see
a surgeon that doesn’t mean you’re going to
have surgery. And I think that is where we
have to do a better job of making ourselves
available and educating patients.
TSN: The other obvious question is why
would a brain surgeon have anything to do
with neck or spinal pain? What is your work
there?
Roberts: That is a common misperception
about neurosurgeons. Neurosurgeons, while
we do work on the brain, we work on the
entire spine. So sometimes people mistake
that and feel that if they have a spinal prob-
lem they should just get an orthopedic spe-
cialist, but neurosurgeons do, and are very
comfortable with, treating problems of the
spine. So that is a very common mispercep-
tion, and again, that’s incumbent on a spe-
cialty to really educate the community and
let people know that if you have a spine
problem, we’ll treat that, and if you have a
cranium problem, we’ll treat that as well.
TSN: What’s the first step people should
take if they want to find out about the med-
ical options available for them?
Roberts: I think really the first step that
people sometimes take is they contact their
primary care. I think that is definitely a wise
choice, but if for some reason they are not
experiencing relief, or they are not diag-
nosed, then in some cases it’s good for
patients to seek their answers, and I think
that an appointment with a neurosurgeon,
like I said, is not the easiest thing to do, but
there are some neurosurgeons who will see
patients without a referral from a primary
care. So this clinic here is one of those, we
will see patients if they call us directly. And
I think if patients have a particular combi-
nation of symptoms – neck pain, headaches
and numbness/weakness – it’s incumbent
on the patient to be diagnosed, because that
can indicate a nerve that’s being pinched, a
disc herniation, stenosis, and I think that if
they have on the other hand a flare-up of
pain that only lasts a day or two and then
completely resolves, then it’s less concern-
ing. Typically it becomes an issue when
people are reporting daily pain or numbness
or weakness that’s not getting better. In that
scenario it’s critical that patients are diag-
nosed and typically the way that we do that
in our clinic are with x-rays and an MRI.
Dr. Roberts is with the Aspen Spine and
Neurosurgery Center affiliated with Legacy
Meridian Park Medical Center. Find out
more about them at http://aspenspineand-
neuro.com/ .
october 26, 2011 The Portland Skanner page 3