It's mid-day at Big Tom's Barbershop in the Hill District, and a few men sit waiting for their turn to get a haircut. A TV plays a talk show, and in the back, some men are talking about their days next to a model of a prostate gland.

And then, in the midst of a discussion about health, a customer wonders aloud: "What are the symptoms of prostate cancer?"

Ed Hardy, a barber, jumps in to list some symptoms -- like stopping and starting while urinating -- and then talks about the importance of getting screened.

The customer shakes his head, and says that people don't want to hear bad news like that.

"They won't hear bad news if they don't wait to get screened," Hardy retorts.

Hardy is one of an army of people in the East End who are being trained to teach preventive strategies to a community with high rates of preventable diseases. Less than a week ago, three studies in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that predominantly black communities like the Hill District have worse health outcomes that comparable white communities.

Today, the University of Pittsburgh will announce that local and national foundations are hoping to close this gap by giving $1.4 million to the program that trained Hardy.

It's an initiative called the Healthy Black Family Project, and it's run out of Pitt's Center for Minority Health at the Graduate School of Public Health. The project was founded to eliminate diabetes and hypertension in black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh's East End.

The project works by teaching people about healthy eating, exercise and disease prevention in places like barbershops, churches and community centers.

"This is a campaign that is really designed to make prevention first rather than waiting until people get sick and have symptoms and chronic disease," said Stephen Thomas, the center's director.

The center received a $500,000 matching grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which will be added to the $900,000 from local organizations like the Pittsburgh Foundation, the DSF Charitable Foundation, the Highmark Foundation and the Poise Foundation, amassing the largest philanthropic investment in the center's 10-year history.

The project began by asking epidemiologist Anthony Robins to define the area to focus these initiatives, called the empowerment zone, by looking at the health status of Pittsburgh's black neighborhoods.

In analyzing his data, he found that black men in Allegheny County were 2.5 times more likely to die of prostate cancer than white men, had shorter life expectancies than white men, and were more likely to have a host of other illnesses.

Nationally, blacks are twice as likely to develop diabetes as are whites, and the death rates for diabetes are twice as high in black populations, said Linda Siminerio, director of Pitt's Diabetes Institute.

The Healthy Black Family Project will try to lessen these disparities by partnering with the Kingsley Association to provide people in the empowerment zone with health coaches, nutritionists, and other health promotion services at no cost. The project already offers cooking classes, exercise classes, a smoking cessation program, yoga and tai chi classes and walking clubs.

For the past two years, the Center for Minority Health has trained barbers, beauticians and others to be lay advocates for disease prevention and using defibrillators.

The project also is offering assessments that allow people to come in and get a personal plan designed to help them improve their health, as well as a genetic health history.

Thomas hopes the intervention will be effective in teaching those with elevated blood glucose levels and high blood pressure to change their behaviors before developing diabetes or having a heart attack.

"These lifestyle interventions have been scientifically proven to delay onset of these diseases," he said.

They'll potentially benefit people like Denise Jackson, of the North Side, who attended a stress reduction workshop and learned how to keep her cholesterol down through these prevention events. She quit smoking in April, and says its comforting to know that support groups are there in case she's tempted in the future.

And it's easier for her to attend sessions in East Liberty, rather than navigating the traffic and parking problems that she might face when visiting a doctor in Oakland.

But even with all of the advantages, the program will face an uphill battle in eradicating health disparities in a region of Pittsburgh that Thomas says has the worst health status in the city. While the sessions seem to have been successful so far, it's often difficult to motivate people to come in after working a full day, said health coach Christopher Howard.

"If you get caught up in your daily routine, you push some things to the side," he said. "A lot of people need to be really motivated."

That's why it might fall to the places that people already frequent to spread the news about disease prevention. It makes the jobs of Joe Hardy and others like him about much more than clipping hair.

The customer at Big Tom's sums it up as his barber brings the razor close to his forehead:

"I grew up with these guys," he said. "I can open up to them, and trust them."