A non-profit organization celebrated Black History Month’s Health and Wellness theme with an event focused on heart health for Black women in the community.
Located in Des Moines, Iowa, Black Women 4 Healthy Living, a Christian organization which works to address health issues amongst Black women, held a workshop where Black women who previously suffered from heart attacks spoke to others.
As one of the monthly events they hold on the third Saturday, the conversation had members such as La-Tica Paige share their personal experiences with heart disease. According to the Des Moines Register, Paige spoke to the women about the disbelief she felt as she was having a heart attack even as she sat in an emergency room and how the health issue prompted Paige to be more proactive with her health.
The organization hopes that hearing stories like Paige’s will help Black women feel less alone in both their heart health struggles and health issues overall.
“We are under a lot of stress, and that’s because we appear to be natural caregivers so we tend to take care of everyone else’s needs and therefore we put our needs on the back-burner,” said Brandi Miller, the creator of Black Women 4 Healthy Living, in conversation with the Des Moines Register. “That suggests to me that there’s a lot more going on inside of us that we care to maybe address.”
According to a 2022 Columbia University Irving Medical Center report with Dr. Marwah Abdalla M.D, high stress is one of the main contributors to heart disease amongst Black women. These increased levels come from a variety of reasons, including dealing with the racism embedded in different levels of society such as housing and employment as well as taking care of their children and parents.
High chronic stress and other factors, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, have made heart disease the number one killer amongst Black women. More Black women are living shorter lives than women of other ethnicities because of this heart disease issue. According to a report released by the American Heart Association, about 50,000 Black women in America pass away from heart disease each year as almost half of all the Black women in the country’s population struggle with it.
Although this is a major health issue, most Black women are not given adequate enough information on how to keep themselves safe. The same report by the American Heart Association details that only 58% of Black women can identify a heart attack and only 36% have been made aware of their increased risk.
Black Women 4 Healthy Living is working on fixing this issue by not only offering events but creating a sense of community that allows their members to confide and seek them out for support.
“It’s very important that we wrap our arms around our Black women in our community,” said a board member, Anesa Buchanan, to the Des Moines Register. “They face a lot of health inequities and disparities that other communities don’t face an increased risk of.”
