April Founder's Corner Blog

 Recently, a friend, who I respect and admire, asked me why Sister-to-Sister, Inc. had decided to devote its limited assets to the eradication of racial and ethnic disparities in health and healthcare, particularly Black maternal, infant, and mental health. At the time, surrounded by others, we were standing in the kitchen of another friend, who was hosting a fundraising gathering for a candidate running for local office. So I simply said, “The quality of anyone’s life depends on the quality of one’s health. Without healthy births of healthy babies whose growth we nurture, ‘a people’ will become extent.” My answer did not fully answer her question. So here’s how I would have supplemented it.

       Weathering is rooted in America’s history of devaluing Black people’s lives.  Manifested through constant and repeated exposure to socioeconomic adversity, political marginalization, and social out-casting, Weathering is slowly and painfully killing Black women! In simple terms, from physical, emotional, and mental tolls, the severity of accumulated stress leads them to weather away. As evidence, these women age much faster than Caucasian women, and, on average, they are seven years older than their biological age.

      Harming Black women’s quality of life, health, livelihood, and much more, Weathering causes chronic medical issues, including pre- and post- pregnancy complications, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Exercise, income and education levels, healthy eating, and professional status cannot spare them.  

   While pregnancy presents unconscionable risks for all women in this country – eighty percent of which are preventable, Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications. As compared to white babies, Black infants are twice as likely to die before age one. Moreover, unaddressed pregnancy-related short-term and long-term health problems tragically affect women’s lives far into the future.

      Twenty percent of women in the U.S. experience maternal mental health issues. Fifty percent of Black mothers will experience them. While Black women are twice as likely as white women to experience such conditions, they are half as likely to receive requisite care. And these conditions are the leading cause of maternal deaths attributable to suicide and drug overdosing within the first year after delivering a child.