There’s a well known cliché that your health is your wealth. But is it really just a cliché, or is it the reality of how you are living? Are you banking for a healthy mature and well-seasoned age? I ask, are you old or just mature? Because from my perspective it is not enough to just get older, it is about living a vibrant and healthy life full of energy, full of laughter and not full of pain.

Speaking from a business and wealth perspective, as a businessperson, I’m sure you have an accountant, perhaps a CPA, a marketing team, maybe even public relations and  definitely, you have a lawyer. But my question is who is on your health team?

Too often, we neglect our health team. The men and women who stand at the threshold of our tomorrow. Building that relationship should begin early in life. Going to the doctor, going to the dentist, going to the specialists that guide you through not only the occasional pain, but those who prevent you from standing on the precipice of indecisions and bad healthy investments.

As we salute black health care professionals, I must first give a shout out to my beautiful wife Doctor Latanya Benjamin, a double board certified pediatric dermatologist. My physician, Doctor Rudolph Moise, my dentist, Doctor Daniel, and I cannot forget my good friend Doctor Delvena Thomas, a huge supporter of the Miami Dade Chamber of Commerce, along with Doctor Nelson Adams. When it comes to black health, black doctors understand our predispositions, our community and our proclivities.

Black doctors and black health care workers are on the front line of ensuring we have a healthy community. They should be celebrated more, should be recognized more, should be recommended more and should be sought out more. Integration opened doors and unfortunately closed more doors perhaps than it opened. Today we face a backlash of those who question the qualifications of those who have had to study harder, work harder to prove they deserve the right to serve our community, and any other community, because of their expertise.

I celebrate Thelma Vernell Anderson Gibson, who fought to change the trajectory of the nursing profession. Subject to only working in the colored ward of the operating room at Jackson hospital in 1947, she fought to change that narrative.

I celebrate Dr. Dazelle Simpson who was the first African-American board certified  pediatrician in Florida in 1957, along with her husband Dr. George A. Simpson who became Florida’s first black board-certified general surgeon and the first black doctor to perform surgery at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

I celebrate our past, as there are those who wish to erase our past. I celebrate our future because there are those who say you are not good enough.

Gordon Eric Knowles is president and CEO of the Miami Dade Chamber of Commerce. www.m-dcc.org. “Creating opportunities for economic and social transformation in our community”