The Secret to Black Women’s Health: Ask, Listen, Do

Every day there are news stories and studies that say that Black women are not healthy. We’ve seen and heard these stories so often that we internalize them and take them as fact. But the truth is that there is far more right with Black women than wrong. We can strengthen our health outcomes by building on our assets. The Black Woman’s Health Imperative (BWHI) knows this to be true, and we want every Black woman to believe it as well. BWHI is the only national organization dedicated to improving the health and wellness of our nation’s twenty-one million Black women and girls—physically, emotionally, and financially.

BWHI’s ability to partner with and invest in grassroots organizations that serve and connect with Black women around the country extends our reach and makes it possible for us to consistently bring outreach, awareness, and health programs to women of color. BWHI, at its essence, is an organization that is committed to improving health outcomes for Black women across the ages and stages of their lives. Recently we went to the source—Black women—to find out how they define health in their own lives. As public health professionals, we need to flip the script on how we think about addressing the health of Black women. We need to start with how they feel before we focus on how they act.

Between February 2014 and December 2016, BWHI collected responses from 3,800 Black women on how they defined health. We asked for words and phrases that define health to them. We conducted online outreach through email marketing and also promoted paper surveys during large meetings, including meetings of the American Public Health Association, the National Medical Association, the National Urban League, the National Association of Health Services Executives, and the National Book Club Conference. The question we asked was: “If you were in optimal health, what would that mean and look like for you?”

What We Learned

Responses to the BWHI survey showed that:

• • Eighty-five percent of all words and phrases shared were psychosocial; for example, “I’m calm,” “I’m in control,” “I’m at peace,” and “I’m confident.”

• • Ten percent of all words and phrases were financial; for example, “I can take care of my kids,” “I can keep a roof over my head,” and “I can pay all of my bills.”

• • Five percent of all words and phrases were related to physical health and disease state; for example, “I’m strong,” “I’m not sick,” “I don’t have any health issues,” and “I’m happy with my weight.”

In other words, in the words of one respondent: “If I can get my mind right and my spirit right and my money right? I can take care of everything else!”

A New Approach to Black Women’s Health

The results of BWHI’s survey suggest that the way public health professionals have gone about developing and implementing programs to address Black women’s health for the past thirty years has been largely wrong. So often researchers, policy makers, and community leaders assume they know what is important to women regarding their health. They approach their work as if preventing diabetes or heart disease is the most important thing to Black women. While these issues are indeed important, public health researchers are learning something much more powerful. Black women are saying loud and clear what they think, feel, believe, and do about their health. The problem is, few in the research, medical, and policy community have bothered to listen—until now.

BWHI is employing social listening tools and data science to turn what Black women are saying about their health into programs, messages, and policies that give them the strategies and resources to improve their health right where they are. BWHI is using this information to create links between emotional and physical wellness in order to develop predictive behavior profiles—a new evidence base for wellness and equality in health. To start this effort, BWHI published a groundbreaking report, IndexUS: What Healthy Black...