Brooklyn, New York - Chronic vitamin D deficiency is a silent epidemic that is taking the lives of countless blacks worldwide. Correcting the Vitamin D Deficiency Epidemic: Strategies to Fight Diseases and Prolong Life for Black People (ISBN 978-0-912444-49-9), is the first book to comprehensively address the under-examined issue of critical vitamin D deficiency among blacks, a major contributor to the health disparities present in Black communities.  

The author, Mrs. Emily Allison-Francis, is a nutritionist, librarian, and educator.

Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent among dark-skinned people because high concentrations of melanin in dark skin block the production of vitamin D from the sun, the most natural and abundant source of vitamin D.   More than 90 percent of Blacks have critically low vitamin D levels and Blacks also suffer disproportionate illness and mortality rates from major chronic diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency.   

Correcting the Vitamin D Deficiency Epidemic: Strategies to Fight Diseases and Prolong Life for Black People explores the connection between vitamin D deficiency and the high illness and mortality rates among Blacks. It also provides practical steps that dark-skinned people worldwide can take to improve their vitamin D status as well as useful, natural health strategies to help prevent and fight chronic diseases.  Leading scientists in the field of vitamin D research have commented on the book including:

• Dr. Cedric Garland, professor at the School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, who urges "all society, and concerned people of all ethnicities to act upon" the information provided in the book.
• Dr. William B. Grant, director of The Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center, who advises that the book "should be required reading for every black family in the United States; white and brown Americans could learn much from it as well."
• Dr. Bruce Hollis, director of pediatric nutritional sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, who implores "patients and physicians [to] heed [the book's] advice."
• And Dr. Vin Tangpricha, associate professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, who notes: "This book covers the link between vitamin D deficiency, vitamin D status in African Americans and the diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency."
  

Copies of the book may be purchased online.