Health Risks of Female Blacks Told

For Orange County’s tiny community of black women, Sunday’s African American health conference was at once a chance to talk about the very real health issues they face, and a rare opportunity to come together.

“It makes a much more cohesive black community,” said Amye Allen, 43, of Tustin. “It’s something we need. We don’t have a real community. It’s so spread out.”

Connie Franks said the Orange County African American Women’s Health Coalition Symposium reminded busy women to take care of themselves. “You get so focused on work and family,” she said. “It’s important to take time to think about health.”

Blacks make up about 13% of the U.S. population, but only 2% of the people living in Orange County. Sunday, the 200 women who gathered at Chapman University in Orange learned that black women often face a disproportionate percentage of health problems.

Keynote speaker Dr. Lisa Masterson, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Santa Monica, detailed a host of disturbing statistics designed to encourage black women to talk to their doctors more and to take better care of themselves.

More than two-thirds of women between the ages of 13 and 24 who reported new HIV infections in the U.S. last year were black, she said. Among women, blacks made up 73% of gonorrhea cases in the country in 1997, 84% of the syphilis cases and 42% of chlamydia cases.

The solution, Masterson said, is for young women to go to a doctor and learn precautions when they start becoming sexually active--not when they already have contracted a venereal disease or become pregnant.

Masterson also noted that black women die at a rate that is 20% higher than white women and that they develop breast cancer at an earlier age.

In an interview after her 15-minute speech, Masterson said that black women face greater health problems, in part, because they often are under more stress than white women. Many black women, she said, serve as their family’s sole financial support.

“That can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed” and of inadequacy and low self-esteem, she said. One result can be destructive health practices like smoking, alcoholism, drug abuse and eating disorders, she said.

The prevalence of obesity among black women, she said, is a symptom of depression.

Black women who are fighting their way up in the white world face another kind of stress, Masterson said. During her five-year residency at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, she was the only black female.

“You have to have a very strong self-image,” she said. “You’re not blond and blue-eyed.”

Masterson also decried the end of affirmative action. “There are people who don’t want you to succeed. . . . What happened to integration? It’s not happening.”

In addition to Masterson’s talk, other workshops discussed stress and nutrition. Two seminars, one on smoking and one on relationships, were for teenagers.

The other keynote speaker was Michele Smith, a former honors student and basketball player at UC Irvine. She held herself up as an example.

“It’s not every day that you will find a 23-year-old African American woman who is Christian, educated, childless, welfare-independent,” she said.

Smith recited the names of African queens throughout history. “The queens of yesterday were strong, proud, supreme and beautiful in every way possible,” she said. “I would say they laid down a very good foundation to what being an African American woman symbolizes.”