Introduction: African American (AA) women have reported hair maintenance as a barrier to regular exercise; however, to our knowledge, this study is the first to identify primary care provider thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge regarding hair as a barrier to increased physical activity among AA females. Methods: A 13-question electronic survey was sent via email to 151 clinicians working within a department of family medicine's 8 ambulatory clinics within a large urban academic medical center. Results: A total of 62 primary care clinicians completed the survey, which is a response rate of 41%. The vast majority of respondents (95%) sometimes/often engage in discussions with AA female patients regarding physical activity. However, 76% of respondents have never included a hairstyling or maintenance assessment in that discussion and only 34% noted being comfortable discussing this topic. Among a list of potential barriers to exercise, hair maintenance/scalp perspiration was rarely endorsed as important by clinicians. Discussion: This study highlights a need for increased education among primary care providers regarding AA hair care and maintenance practices as a barrier to increased physical activity in AA women. If specific barriers to increasing healthy habits among AA women are to be addressed, there must be a baseline knowledge of hair care and maintenance barriers, an understanding of the strong influence of cultural norms and practices as it relates to physical activity and exercise, and an increased comfortability when engaging in difficult cross-cultural conversations to ultimately improve health outcomes in AA females. (J Am Board Fam Med 2019;32:944-947.)

Responding to health and digital inequities among older African Americans, a customized web-based mobile health information intervention is being developed for this vulnerable group and their doctors as part of the Health Empowerment Technologies (HET) Project. The belief is an empowered patient-doctor relationship leads to more improved health outcomes than patient empowerment alone. Using health information technology to empower both older African Americans and their doctors by increasing health literacy and computer capacities of both is the major HET study aim. A focus group of older African American patients and one of their doctors yielded data to help build the HET. Thematic analysis of opinions and preferences about the content and structure of the HET revealed concordance and asymmetry among the patients and doctors. While challenges prevail in its construction, building this ethnicity-specific web-based health information technology presents the opportunity to integrate health information technology in clinical encounters for every patient.