By Noel Cody ·Updated December 2, 2021
As we get ready to welcome a new year, make this your moment to live a full, healthy life. To help you do just that, Lincoln is teaming up with top organizations to shine a light on health conditions that disproportionately affect Black women.
To better understand and discuss the pressing range of societal issues facing the Black community, Lincoln has created Safe Space Conversations. And to kick off this series, Lincoln Listens First, featured Linda Blount, President and CEO of Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI). As the first nonprofit organization created by Black women to help protect and advance the health and wellness of Black women and girls, they are tackling everything from health equity to diseases affecting the women in our communities.
Starting the ConversationIn this candid conversation, Angela Rye and Linda Blount dive into how the lived experience of Black women matter in health—and the toll the last year has taken when we became overnight DEI experts, educating friends and co-workers about 400 years of injustice. To help combat everyday stressors like this, Linda shares the 5-7-9 breathing technique—watch now to experience it!
Unmuting FibroidsBWHI is dedicated to turning up the volume on the health conditions that disproportionally affect Black women, like uterine fibroids. Did you know it’s estimated that 80% of African American women will have uterine fibroids by age 50? It’s true, these noncancerous tumors that grow in the uterus and range from the size of a pea to that of a football or larger, affect an estimated 26 million U.S. women between the ages of 15 and 50. Black women, hit hardest by fibroids, are diagnosed at nearly three times the rate of white women and with more severe symptoms leading to increased hospitalizations and infertility.
BWHI is proud to support the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Uterine Fibroid Research and Education Act of 2021, which was introduced by Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) in March 2021. Women suffering from uterine fibroids in America has reached epidemic proportions, and Black women suffer at higher rates and more severely from this condition. This legislation would appropriate $30 million to the National Institutes of Health for fiscal years 2022 through 2026 and establish a research database for treatment of fibroids.
To see how you can help, click here to join the movement and support Black women by raising your voice to this important issue. And to see more conversations on Lincoln Listens First, check out the full playlist and previous conversations here.
The post It’s Time to Reclaim Your Wellness appeared first on Essence.
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