News

On Valentine’s Day 2017, Ebony Boyd picked up some holiday doughnuts as she headed to work feeling “blessed and happy,” she recalls. She was six months pregnant and excited to be having a baby whom she and her boyfriend had already named.

But a few hours after she got to work, Boyd, 36, started feeling excruciating pain. Her doctor suggested that she head for a hospital emergency room. Once there, “they checked for my baby’s heartbeat and there wasn’t any,” Boyd said. Boyd barely had a chance to begin to grieve her loss when she started hemorrhaging badly. Her blood pressure skyrocketed. Two transfusions later, Boyd started to stabilize.

But just as she was about to be discharged from the hospital three days later, she developed a pulmonary embolism. “They told me if I had been sent home I might not have made it to the next day,” sBoyd, who lives in the Bronx, said in a recent interview.

Boyd could easily be one of the data points in a new study released on Wednesday. It found that African- American women like her, along with women of other minority groups, are far more likely to experience severe, life-threatening complications related to giving birth than white women.

“It’s important that we identify racial and ethnic minority women with chronic conditions as a high-risk group,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Lindsay Admon, an assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan. “The trends we’re seeing now are startling. They’ve gotten some national attention directed towards the health of new mothers.”

The big concern is maternal death, which also hits minorities harder than whites. Deaths are hard to study, though, because there aren’t that many of them each year. So Admon and her colleagues focused on severe, life-threatening complications that could kill a woman if she didn’t get the right care at exactly the right time. The researchers figured that by scrutinizing more than 40,000 severe complications they might see ways that the care of moms-to-be could be improved and deaths related to delivery reduced.

Recent studies that have found mortality rates due to pregnancy complications on the rise have spurred some officials into action. This week, a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to Health Secretary Alex Azar saying, “This troubling trend makes the United States an outlier among every other developed country.”

The researchers found that non-Hispanic black women had a 70 percent higher rate of major birth-related problems compared with non-Hispanic white women. Compared with non-Hispanic white women, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaska Native women also had higher rates of severe complications.

“Recognizing that these disparities exist, it behooves us to figure out how to decrease the disparities,” said Dr. Alan Peaceman, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and chief of obstetrics at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “The numbers here are concerningly high.”

Read more on NBCNews.com.

The following was written by and from the perspective of Eric D. Hargan, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

A key piece to success in serving the American people involves going to them in person and hearing what is important in their lives. That was the reason that a large delegation from HHS recently made the trip to the interior of Alaska.

Our delegation visited with Alaska Native community leaders and families in Allakaket, Alatna, Hughes, Koyukuk, Manley, Tanana, Rampart, and Fairbanks. Through community meetings and tours of healthcare facilities, we heard about everything from the latest in Telehealth technology and medicine “vending machines” to Head Start and eldercare and the continuing challenges of clean drinking water and waste disposal.

In addition to helping to enhance HHS’s understanding of the challenges faced by remote tribal communities, the tour informed our meeting with the Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee (STAC), which convened in Fairbanks on September 24 and 25.

During our community visits, it became abundantly clear that the quality of care offered in Alaska Native health facilities should be a point of pride for everyone involved in tribal health.  Alaska Native healthcare providers build on the strengths of tribal culture, customs and community to deliver an impressive whole-of-person approach to care.  Patient needs, community providers, and community leaders are driving the delivery of quality healthcare.

Providing care in rural and remote areas is a challenge—one of the most significant problems American healthcare faces.  The challenges are especially substantial in Alaska, America’s most sparsely populated state, and in other parts of Indian Country.

Read more on SAMHSA.gov.

The Office of the Surgeon General, with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), plans to develop and produce a report by the U.S. Surgeon General on the link between investments in community health and community and other measures of well-being and economic prosperity. 

The Surgeon General imagines a robust community investment strategy, spearheaded by the private sector, to make communities more vibrant and workers healthier and fit for the 21st century economy. Dr. Jerome Adams believes preventing chronic diseases and behavioral health issues is more cost effective than treating them. Investments in community health is a key prevention strategy to produce greater individual and community health and well-being and ultimately lead to greater economic and overall prosperity. The Surgeon General will compile the available evidence and best practices documenting the connection between private sector investment in the health of their employees and communities and collective prosperity, and issue a report to share the evidence, inspire future research and provide tools and resources for effective, efficient community health investments that produce results.

The Surgeon General wants to build upon the community health work that has already been done and would like to hear from you about the initiatives you are doing to address community health and prosperity.

The deadline to submit written views, recommendations, and data on the connection between community health and prosperity, business investment in local community health, investment strategies, the role of a healthy workforce in business success, and contributions of local policy makers towards community development is due on November 5, 2018. 

Click here to visit the Federal Register Notice (FRN) released by the CDC to share your ideas, examples and data.

Lillibeth Gonzalez proudly celebrated her 26th “HIVersary” on June 2, marking yet another milestone for the woman who has overcome addiction, domestic violence, stigma and the AIDS-related deaths of three siblings.

“I went through hell and back to get to where I’m at today,” says Gonzalez, who is a native New Yorker. “But I’m so happy because I’m living and aging with HIV.”

In 1992, Gonzalez tested HIV positive. Inspired to persevere by her young son, she became mentally strong while physically suffering. With the epidemic raging on, Gonzalez refused to sit idly by, so she underwent training on HIV from several health and wellness organizations, including Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and Exponents.

“I informed myself so I could help others make informed choices,” Gonzalez says.

For 25 years, Gonzalez has been a client at GMHC, the world’s first HIV organization. She has also worked there as a community health educator since 2006.

She empowers people living with HIV to become educated and to help raise HIV awareness. She often hosts forums, workshops and conferences targeting New York’s most underserved communities.

Read more on POZ.com.

Adolescence and the early years of adulthood are a time of life when many changes occur, for example changing schools, leaving home, and starting university or a new job. For many, these are exciting times. They can also be times of stress and apprehension however. In some cases, if not recognized and managed, these feelings can lead to mental illness. The expanding use of online technologies, while undoubtedly bringing many benefits, can also bring additional pressures, as connectivity to virtual networks at any time of the day and night grows. Many adolescents are also living in areas affected by humanitarian emergencies such as conflicts, natural disasters and epidemics. Young people living in situations such as these are particularly vulnerable to mental distress and illness.

Half of all mental illness begins by the age of 14

Half of all mental illness begins by the age of 14, but most cases go undetected and untreated. In terms of the burden of the disease among adolescents, depression is the third leading cause. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds. Harmful use of alcohol and illicit drugs among adolescents is a major issue in many countries and can lead to risky behaviours such as unsafe sex or dangerous driving. Eating disorders are also of concern.

Growing recognition of the importance of building mental resilience

Fortunately, there is a growing recognition of the importance of helping young people build mental resilience, from the earliest ages, in order to cope with the challenges of today’s world. Evidence is growing that promoting and protecting adolescent health brings benefits not just to adolescents’ health, both in the short- and the long-term, but also to economies and society, with healthy young adults able to make greater contributions to the workforce, their families and communities and society as a whole.

Prevention begins with better understanding

Much can be done to help build mental resilience from an early age to help prevent mental distress and illness among adolescents and young adults, and to manage and recover from mental illness. Prevention begins with being aware of and understanding the early warning signs and symptoms of mental illness. Parents and teachers can help build life skills of children and adolescents to help them cope with everyday challenges at home and at school. Psychosocial support can be provided in schools and other community settings and of course training for health workers to enable them to detect and manage mental health disorders can be put in place, improved or expanded.

Read more on WHO.int.

The following was written by and from the perspective of Vanessa Willhoughby

At the age of 13, I experienced my first serious bout of depression and anxiety. What I was experiencing included mainly an uncontrollable, relentless chokehold of self-hatred and hopeless despair. Of course, I didn’t know then that these intense mood swings constituted a mental illness. I just knew that these gruesome waves of sadness went beyond teenage angst. I was trapped in a sealed bell jar, despondent on the outside, crawling out of my skin on the inside.

The initial thought of seeking help seemed painfully daunting. Yet as the depressive episodes deepened in duration and intensity, I understood that I couldn’t continue to exist in a constant state of debilitating emotional turbulence — I wanted relief from the looped agony of living. Unfortunately, there were considerable obstacles in the way of getting help. As a black woman who grew up in a painfully white suburb in Connecticut, it was an anomaly to encounter people who looked like me. The prospect of finding a black therapist seemed like an impossible feat. Although the financial aspect wasn’t necessarily a prohibiting factor, I felt burdened by an immense sense of shame and embarrassment.

At the time, however, both of my parents were susceptible to the cultural stigma surrounding therapy — in their eyes, allowing their teenage daughter to get professional help meant that they had royally failed as parents. My father, a black man who had grown up in the same town I called home, had been instilled with the mantra of “not airing your dirty laundry out in public.” He viewed therapy as not only a violation of his privacy, but a practice largely for and exhibited by white people. My mother, an Asian immigrant, didn’t believe in the idea of paying someone to listen to all of your problems. Not only did she believe it would dishonor the family, but she also saw it as an unnecessary luxury. For my parents, though they certainly meant well, therapy was just something people of color didn’t do. My parents weren’t alone in their beliefs.

And yet, according to the Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, “African Americans are 20 percent more likely to experience serious mental health problems than the general population.” While the term “self-care” has slowly but surely seeped into our cultural vocabulary, discussing the topic of mental health, especially within the black community, is still stigmatized.

Asking for help is viewed as a sign of weakness, a deeply troubling character flaw. Instead of turning to a therapist or counselor, many black folks suffer in silence. The idea of resilience becomes not only harmful, but a form of unwanted emotional labor. A plethora of reasons, including inherent cultural biases, routinely prevent members of the black community from seeking professional help.

According to Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in the state of Georgia, there are a few common factors that prevent members of the black community from seeking help. She is also the founder of Therapy for Black Girls, an online platform committed to providing black women and girls with knowledge about mental health and wellness. In an email interview with me, Bradford mentioned uncertainty as a pervasive factor.

“My mental health journey hasn’t been easy, but the relief that came with finding a black therapist was essential.”

– Vanessa Willhoughby

Bradford says, “I think that a lot of people are still unsure about what happens when you go to therapy, and I also think that a lot of people have had very hurtful and harmful experiences in therapy which makes them less likely to want to return.”

Read more on Allure.com.