Beauty salons: A promising health promotion setting for reaching and promoting health among African American women

African American women suffer disproportionately from a wide range of health disparities. This article clarifies how beauty salons can be mobilized at all levels of the social-ecological framework to address dis-parities in health among African American women. The North Carolina BEAUTY and Health Project is a ran-domized, controlled intervention trial that takes into account the unique and multilevel features of the beauty salon setting with interventions that address owners, customers, stylists; interactions between customers and stylists; and the salon environment. The authors make explicit the role of the political economy of health the-oretical perspective for understanding important factors (social, political, historical, and economic) that should be considered if the goal is to create successful, beauty-salon-based interventions. Despite some important challenges, the authors contend that beauty salons represent a promising setting for maximizing reach, reinforcement, and the impact of public health interventions aimed at addressing health disparities among African American women