On this week's 51%, we speak with Stephanie Johnson of the American Medical Association about a new campaign to promote heart health and self-care among Black women. We also discuss sexual health, vaginal pain, and postpartum care with Dr. Molly Rivest, a women's health practitioner based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Guests: Stephanie Johnson, spokesperson for the American Medical Association; Dr. Molly Rivest, Barrington OB-GYN

51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Our producer is Jesse King, our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is “Lolita” by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue.

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You're listening to 51%, a WAMC production dedicated to women's issues and experiences. Thanks for tuning in, and Jesse King. We've got another roundup of health-related interviews and stories for you today – as our first guest says, “Health is wealth.”

Stephanie Johnson is a spokesperson with the American Medical Association, and the brain behind its “Release the Pressure” campaign. Johnson helped launch Release the Pressure right around the time the pandemic hit the U.S., March of 2020, in hopes of providing Black women with better tools to monitor their health, particularly their heart health. She says the idea for the campaign came when her own mother was battling heart disease.

"Heart disease is something that has impacted my family for some time," says Johnson. "I lost my father to a stroke, my brother Bruce to a pulmonary embolism. And then my sister, not long after my mother passed away, also died of a stroke. Her name is Anita. And so I just was in awe of the statistics that more than 50 percent of Black women over the age of 20 have high blood pressure and more than 30 percent of Black adults in the country have heart disease. And I just could not believe why so many women and why the age 20 — I mean, typically when you're talking to your mom and dad, or aunts or uncles, about graduating from college, that doesn't usually include a conversation around, you know, 'You should be knowing your systolic and diastolic numbers.' One out of every two or three people might have high blood pressure and not even know it. That's just not the conversations that I was having with my parents, but it is exactly where we need to be now: having regular conversations with our teens, our kids, about health. And HIW is my moniker: 'Health is wealth.' And if I can get people to get on board with, they should be thinking about health the same way they think about picking a college, or picking a car or what have you — then that would be a significant change in this country toward improved health outcomes. That's the brainchild behind [Release the Pressure]. And what I saw is that people were working in silos, a ton of organizations with the same mission, but all having siloed work. So with Release the Pressure, we brought together like-minded squads: the American Heart Association, the Association of Black Cardiologists, the Minority Health Institute, AMA Foundation, NMA. Every one of those organizations that have a concerted mission to see health disparities broken down in this country. Let's pull together our resources, our expertise and everything that we have, and go after it."

Those numbers....I've never heard of those numbers either. And I feel like that's very surprising. I was going to ask you when should people start seriously looking at their heart health, and I would have never guessed 20.

It blows your mind right? I'm gonna say it again. 50 percent of black women over the age of 20 have high blood pressure. That's known as the silent killer in this country, because whether you don't feel the symptoms — and most people don't — bad things are happening inside your body that are putting stress on your organs and your heart and putting you on a path [to heart disease]. If you don't take proactive steps to monitor and know your numbers.