CDC Report: Black Women at Higher Death Risk from Pregnancy Complications

…Death rate for pregnant women with no insurance…nearly four times higher than…insured women…

by Dorothy Rowley
AFRO Staff Writer

(Courtesy Photo/UrbanHippieLove)

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African-American women are at the greatest risk of dying from pregnancy-related complications, largely because they tend to forego prenatal care, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Overall, Black women are three to four times more likely than White women to succumb to difficult pregnancies. CDC also found that deaths within one year of pregnancy typically occur from complications such as blood clots, hemorrhage and heart problems. 

“Pregnancy is a joyful time, but not without its risks,” Dr. Renee Volny, an obstetrician-gynecologist and health policy fellow at the Satcher Health Leadership Institute in Atlanta, told TheGrio.com. “Pregnancy puts physical stress on some of the body’s vital organs.”

Without the proper assessment by a doctor—including a series of check-ups to ensure the health of both the mother and her unborn child—Volny said that expectant women might not realize the pregnancy could put their life at risk.

The CDC data found that over the past 20 years there have been more pregnancy-related deaths among all populations of women, and that without early prenatal care it would be difficult to detect potentially fatal conditions. 

Due to perceived racism or a lack of insurance, Black women often avoid prenatal care. As a result, they are more likely than other pregnant women to hemorrhage or die from ectopic pregnancies, a condition in which a fetus develops inside the fallopian tubes rather than in the uterus. 

According to findings published this summer in a study that focused on Black pregnant women in New York, pregnancy-induced hypertension as well as a high percentage of Caesarean section deliveries contributed to deaths in that city. The cases studied most often involved women from neighborhoods in the southeast Queens and northeast Bronx boroughs. 

The report, which was co-sponsored by the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, found that the death rate for pregnant women with no insurance was nearly four times higher than for insured women, and that nearly half of all women who died from pregnancy-related causes had been diagnosed as obese. 

Volny expressed hope that the number of pregnancy-related deaths will decrease with insurance more widely available due to the passage of health care reform measures.

“With its passing, almost every mother will have health insurance, which will remove at least one barrier of accessing preconception counseling and prenatal care,” Volny said.

Meadowlark Lemon makes a key "SHOT" with new book

ENTERTAINMENT

Fri, Dec 10 19:57 PM EST

By David Schwartz

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona (Reuters) - Harlem Globetrotters great Meadowlark Lemon remembers the day he first saw the team that would become his life's story as if it were yesterday.

In the darkened Ritz Theater in Wilmington, N.C., he sat mesmerized as newsreel footage showed the famous tricksters of basketball going through their paces to the delight of fans.

"I saw them when I was 11 years-old and that became my life's work," Lemon told Reuters, following a workout on a basketball court near his adopted home in Scottsdale, Ariz. "I had the desire, a vision to make it my life's work and that's what I did."

Now, the 78-year-old is out with a new book that tells of his growing up in a poor neighborhood in the segregated south to become the celebrated "Clown Prince of Basketball," known to generations of fans in the U.S. and around the world.

The book, "Trust Your Next SHOT: A Guide to a Life of Joy," is both a memoir and a book in which he shares his philosophies on a successful life, filled with a heaping dose of stories from a Hall of Fame basketball career that spans more than 16,000 games and continues to this day.

The Globetrotters were formed in the 1920s, initially as a serious team. Years later they transformed into an exhibition squad that mixed skill, entertainment and comedy on the court.

Lemon joined the team in 1955 and would become one of the its star players -- and tricksters -- as it traveled around the world as ambassadors for basketball.

In the book, Lemon traces his move from the court to the pulpit, preaching his own brand of self-help wisdom.

"We tell kids, 'don't drink, don't smoke,' but we don't tell them how to do that," said Lemon, an ordained minister. "This book does tell them, how you can live a better life. It's the way I go about things today."

TAKING A "SHOT"

Lemon said his way is all about taking a SHOT, an acronym for Spirit, Health, Opportunity and Teamwork, as a guide to life on and off the court.

The always smiling basketball star said he developed his philosophies on life from coaches such as Earl "Poppa Jack" Jackson, a father figure who taught him his trademark hook shot at the Boys Club.

"Wherever there's a gym, an athletic field, you'll find a Poppa Jack and if you're sincere about what you want to do ... he will find you," he said.

While traveling with the Globetrotters, Lemon confronted the sting of racial discrimination.

"There's no word for that kind of pain," recalled Lemon, about the treatment of African-Americans in the United States during that time. "It a different kind of pain."

He took to heart words by Globetrotters owner and coach Abe Saperstein, who told him to fight the situation by "making them laugh." And that is what Lemon specialized in.

He spent 26 years with the Globetrotters, traveling to more than 100 countries and playing before kings and queens, popes and presidents. He played on courts fashioned from an empty pool in Germany, a bull ring in Spain and a makeshift court on an Italian beach.

He also played with such NBA stars as Wilt Chamberlain, who he said was as good as it gets.

Lemon formed three other exhibition teams on his own, and he still plays at least 60 games a year with his Harlem All-Stars squad.

He said he keeps up with professional basketball, but he has no regrets about never having played in the National Basketball Association because it never was his goal.

"That wasn't my vision, that wasn't my dream," he said. "My dream was to do what I did. And I have to tell you, I was pretty good at it."

As for retirement, Lemon said that's not even on his radar screen. "I find that people who retire get lazy, they're miserable and sometimes they are hard to live with. And they die early. I prefer not to go that route."

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

McGee Brown appointed to Ohio Supreme Court

Friday, December 10, 2010  10:30 AM

BY JOE HALLETT

The Columbus Dispatch

Gov. Ted Strickland made a historic appointment to the Ohio Supreme Court today, selecting Yvette McGee Brown as the court's first African-American female member.

McGee Brown, 50, will fill a vacancy created when Justice Maureen O'Connor was elected chief justice Nov. 2. O'Connor and McGee Brown will assume their new court spots on Jan. 1.

McGee Brown, who became the first black female member of the Franklin County Common Pleas Court when she was elected in 1992, will be the lone Democrat on the seven member court. McGee Brown was Strickland's lieutenant governor running mate this year, but they lost to the Republican ticket of John Kasich and Mary Taylor.

In a statement, Strickland referred to McGee Brown's longtime advocacy for disadvantaged Ohioans and said she would bring "a wise and compassionate voice for the most vulnerable" to the court.

"Yvette is one of the most remarkable public servants I know," Strickland said. "Throughout her life, from a humble upbringing to a distinguished career serving others, Yvette has embodied the highest levels of personal integrity and an exceptional intellectual capacity."

McGee Brown told The Dispatch that she intends to run in November 2012 to fulfill the remaining two years on O'Connor's current term, and then seek a full six-year term in 2014.

"I told the governor I believe I can hold the seat," McGee Brown said.

Strickland also considered Kent Marcus, his chief legal counsel in the governor's office, and Mary Jane Trapp, an appeals judge from Geauga County, for the Supreme Court appointment. Trapp lost her Supreme Court bid in November to Republican Justice Judith Lanzinger.

McGee Brown will be the third African-American to serve on the state Supreme Court, following Robert M. Duncan of Columbus, who left the court in 1971, and Lloyd O. Brown of Cleveland, who left in 1973.

With McGee Brown aboard, the Supreme Court will have a 4-3 female majority in January for the third time in its history, the first occurring in 2003 and the second in 2005.

Chief Justice-elect O'Connor, speaking for her colleagues, issued a statement welcoming McGee Brown.

"Judge McGee Brown is an accomplished, respected public servant, and she brings much needed diversity to the Court," O'Connor said.

"I know most of the justices so I am confident there will be a collegial environment to work in," McGee Brown said. "I'm going to bring a unique perspective to the court, not just as a Democrat, but as someone with domestic relations and juvenile court experience and experience in the private sector."

McGee Brown left the Franklin County court in 2002 to create the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. She has a humble background, born to a single, teenage mother on the East Side who worked two jobs to provide for her family.

The vacancy McGee Brown will fulfill resulted from a domino effect that occurred after Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer died unexpectedly on April 2. Strickland appointed Franklin County Probate Judge Eric Brown to the seven months left on Moyer's term and O'Connor defeated Brown at the Nov. 2 election.

Dennis Mulvihill, president of the Ohio Association for Justice, the trial bar that supported and helped fund the campaigns of Brown and Trapp, praised Strickland's appointment of McGee Brown.

"Judge Brown will add sorely needed philosophic diversity to a court that has shown a propensity to be partial to corporate and insurance interests," Mulvihill said. "Working Ohioans will benefit from this appointment."

Anthony Sharett, president of the John Mercer Langston Bar Association, comprised of about 100 black attorneys in central Ohio, said McGee Brown will "bring balance and a great judicial temperament to the bench. We understand the historic nature of the appointment and know that Yvette McGee Brown will embrace this opportunity." 

jhallett@dispatch.com

Study: Only half of women over 40 get mammograms

A study released at a symposium by the American Association for Cancer Research finds that only half of women over age 40 get annual mammograms and only 60 percent are getting them every two years – despite the fact that mammograms are covered by health insurance.

That's just one of the findings being released at the symposium in San Antonio, TX this week.

For the mammogram study, Medco Health Solutions reviewed 4 years of medical claims by more than 12 million people who either had employer-provided insurance or Medicare.

Experts can't explain why fewer women are getting screened for breast cancer, but attribute some of it to the recent confusion over when women should start getting mammograms.  Last year the U.S. Preventive Task Force recommended that women get mammograms every other year starting at age 50 and that the decision for those aged 40 to 49 be based on risk and patient/doctor discussions.  However, the American Cancer Society and the Mayo Clinic continue to recommend yearly mammograms beginning at age 40.

The researchers suggest women may also be skipping their annual exams because of concerns about discomfort from the test or simply because they get busy and forget to put it on the calendar.

Another study looking at obese women with breast cancer shows that only a subset of patients may be at higher risk for recurrence and death because of their extra weight. Researchers have known for years that women with a high BMI – or body mass index – have lower survival rates from the disease, but this is the first time researchers have pinpointed which group of patients is at a higher risk. Breast cancers are not all the same. The most common and least deadly type affects about 50 to 60 percent of patients. The researchers found that women who fell into this group – referred to as ER-positive/HER2 negative – had about a 25 percent increase risk of relapse and nearly a 50 percent higher risk of death than women who are not obese.  Scientists don't know exactly why the risks are higher and say further study is needed.

Results of the much anticipated AZURE trial, which sought to determine if adding the osteoporosis drug Zoledronic Acid improves survival and decreases recurrence rates, were disappointing.  The study found no increase in survival rates for women with mid-stage breast cancer, according to researchers. The drug was used in combination with other cancer therapies. More than 3,300 women participated in the trial during a 5 year period.

"In the larger population, we did not see a difference," said study author Dr. Robert Coleman, professor of medical oncology at the University of Sheffield in England.

But in about a third of the older patients, who were 5 years post-menopausal, there was an almost 30 percent reduction in risk of dying from the disease. Researchers say further studies are needed to replicate these findings and that the results will likely dissuade doctors from using this treatment on a routine basis in younger women. About 1 percent of those in the study developed deterioration of the jaw bone.

The New Black Images at the Paris Expo of 1900

Published on The Root (http://www.theroot.com)

Home > W.E.B. Du Bois' Talented Tenth in Pictures

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W.E.B. Du Bois' Talented Tenth in Pictures

By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Posted: December 2, 2010 at 12:29 AM

An unusual exhibit of photographs of middle-class African Americans at the Paris Expo of 1900 was a declaration of war against racial stereotypes -- and a forerunner of class conflict among blacks.

Visitors to the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 were introduced to escalators, pictorial panoramas, the Paris Metro and the first films with sound. They also encountered -- in a section of the vast world's fair aptly titled exposé nègre, or Negro exposition -- an unusual photo exhibit: hundreds of images of black professionals and college students.


Mounted to counter stereotypes of blacks as backward and culturally bankrupt, the photographs in W.E.B. Du Bois' two albums, Types of American Negroes and Negro Life in Georgia, U.S.A., at the Paris Expo focused on successful African Americans who thoroughly embodied American middle-class values. These albums constituted a political act, a declaration of inherent nobility in the war over the politics of respectability and the nature of the Negro.
These remarkable images depicted dignified, well-dressed men and women living in comfortable and even lavish homes whose furnishings reflected the occupants' sophisticated taste and refinement. One imagines that Du Bois selected this particular array of "types" primarily for two reasons: first, to present a counter-discourse to "types" of Negroes summoned in the work of anthropologists such as Louis Agassiz half a century before; and second, to create a text or archive of images that could be drawn upon and vastly expanded to refute the extremely popular images of black people as deracinated "Sambos" and lascivious "coons" that peppered trade cards, postcards, advertisements, sheet music and virtually every other form of popular visual culture during the 1890s. At precisely the same time, Jim Crow segregation was being legalized, culminating in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" Supreme Court decision of 1896.
Given the startled reactions of the American media almost a century later to the level of articulation of the parade of black upper-middle-class, well-educated witnesses in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, and similar attitudes expressed in the reviews of Stephen Carter's novel about the black upper class on Martha's Vineyard (The Emperor of Ocean Park, published in 2002), one can only imagine the surprise, the depth of disappointed expectations and the frisson generated in white visitors if they actually reflected on these hundreds of images of black doctors, lawyers and other professionals whose talents and aspirations matched or exceeded those of their white counterparts. That, at least, was Du Bois' hope -- his use of art, of photography, as propaganda.
Revisiting these images today serves to remind us both of the history of the struggle for control of the black image in American society and the necessarily political discourses into which all black art at the time was drawn. But the photographs also make vivid the age-old class divisions within the African-American community -- class divisions born in slavery, first, and then made even more pronounced by the markedly different status of slaves and freed people over the course of slavery.
These class divisions persisted despite pointed reminders such as the Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court decision in 1857 and the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s, which identified all black people before the law as members of one class -- a class that we might think of as the "class of Negroes," a class as defined by "all Negroes shall" or "all Negroes shan't."
In 1860, there were about 3.9 million slaves and 488,000 free Negroes, according to the federal census, and some scholars speculate that the black middle class at the end of the 19th century -- which Du Bois would famously name "the talented tenth" -- was made up disproportionately of descendants of these free Negroes. As we can see, by the turn of the century it was of enormous importance to black progressive politics to summon visual evidence of the talented tenth -- middle-class, "college-bred" Negroes, as Du Bois would have it.
It would be prima facie evidence of the social and intellectual equality of the Negro in the battle against scientific racism, de jure and de facto segregation, discriminatory legal statutes and social customs -- in short, the prevalent anti-black racisms that pervaded American society in the era of Jim Crow.
These photographs were the visual analog of the phenomenon that Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham calls "the politics of respectability," proof that a "New Negro" existed. And the images, meant to be paraded before the world at the Paris Expo, were to serve as proof that the Negro was "improvable"; that the gap between black and white -- within the same class, at least -- was not a gap at all.
Du Bois saw the people in these photographs as cultural warriors, as a vanguard, as missionaries of cultural and educational potential. The question that strikes us today, when the class divide within the black community is so starkly pronounced, is whether or not these photographs were the evidence, in black and white, not so much of the promise of a massive social mobility for the entire race, of the part for the whole, but rather of a nascent class divide within the African-American community -- one that all of us must worry is becoming a permanent fixture of a very complex and bifurcated African-American social identity.
"The Paris Albums 1900: W.E.B. DuBois" was presented by Autograph ABP at Rivington Place, London, Sept. 17 to Nov. 27, 2010. Its tour will bring it to the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, at Harvard University.
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Fashion is still racist, says Naomi Campbell

Alistair Foster, Showbusiness Correspondent
Updated 12:16pm on 08.12.10

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Supermodel Naomi Campbellaccused the fashion industry of racism today as she urged designers to use more black models.

The 40-year-old from Streatham said the industry had taken a step backwards, as she collected a special honour at the British Fashion Awards.
She told the Evening Standard: “We're all aware that we need to introduce more women [of colour].

But what I've seen recently is that I've seen it go backwards slightly. We need to raise awareness again and need to start using women of colour more. When I look at the shows this season, there weren't as many as a year-and-a-half ago. We've got to keep speaking out, so as boring as it may be, if you hear me saying it over and over again I have to stand up for my fellow comrades.

“It's not for myself, but the younger girls who come up to me and say, We didn't get used this season, we didn't do this, someone used 81 models and didn't use one of us.' In that respect if they come up and talk to me, and I'm able to speak on their behalf, then I will.”

Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue, admitted “classically pretty white girls” were favoured. She said: “I really admire Naomi for lobbying about the use of a models with a more varied ethnicity. The industry is changing and there are more top black and Asian models, and of course as the Far Eastbecomes a huge economic factor, Asian models are getting large amounts of work in their home territories.

“It still remains that for most people in this country, classically pretty white girls are their beauty role models, like Kate Moss and Cheryl Cole.”

Campbell praised the British Fashion Council for helping ensure fairness in the industry. A spokesman for the organisation said: “London is one of the world's most multicultural cities and we encourage representation of that on the women's catwalk. Naomi is an incredible model who has had an amazing career, and we were thrilled to be able to honour that last night.”

At the ceremony at the Savoy, Campbell was moved to tears as she collected the Special Recognition Award in front of an audience including Samantha Cameron,Claudia Schiffer, Victoria Beckham and Yasmin Le Bon. The model thanked her mother, who was in the front row, and her partner Vladislav Doronin, who she said “puts up with a wild wild woman”.

Alexander McQueen received a posthumous award for outstanding achievement in fashion design. Lara Stone was named Model 2010 and Alexa Chung won the British Style Award.