By Jackie Jones
Over the past 20 years, cancer death rates for men have decreased by 21 percent for men and 15-16 percent for women, but increasing obesity rates threaten to reverse those trends, especially for African-American women, according to Otis Brawley, M.D., chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society.

By C. Nicole Mason
A few weeks ago, I was visiting with a friend and she relayed a troubling story to me. She had visited family down south and threw a slumber party for her nieces and nephews. As a part of her duties for the evening, she fixed dinner and provided the treats. To the usual fare of ice cream and pizza, she added a vegetable tray of carrots and celery. While chowing down, her nephew turned to her and asked what it was he was eating that tasted so good.

It was a carrot.

By Janet Singleton
Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair caused bad feelings last summer for many black female film-goers, who felt more betrayed than they did fairly portrayed by the film. Lost in all of the earsplitting debates and viral blog posts, was any deeper discussion of the health implications for black women and girls who use hair straightener

By Rev. Susan Newman
One of the best lessons my mother taught me as a child is “It is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.” This is how I feel about the looming threat of abortion restrictions being reintroduced in the Health Care Reform bill when debate begins on the Senate floor.

By TaRessa Stovall
Experts call it “food insecurity … meaning that the food intake is reduced and … disrupted at times … because the household lacked money and other resources for food.” And not surprisingly, it’s on the rise.

By Makani Themba Nixon
A recent Cornell University study finds that half of all US children and 90 percent of black children will eat food paid for by food stamps at some point in their childhoods. You, like the good folk at Cornell, may think this is dire and even shocking news. And for good reason, as the co-authors of the study write in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that food stamp use is an important indicator of poverty and food insecurity.

By Janet Singleton
As of January 1, 2010, the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act will mandate that insurance coverage for mental health be comparable to that for other medical interventions, for group plans of companies employing 50 or more. What it means, for those who are sheltered beneath its modest umbrella, is that reimbursements, number of visits, annual and lifetime caps, co-payments, and any out-of-pocket costs for psychotherapy and related medications should be in line with, for example, treatment for diabetes.

By Doug Miller
The H1N1 swine flu pandemic amounts to a national emergency, according to President Barack Obama, who issued a formal declaration that frees medical providers from time-consuming federal regulations if the virus threatens to put local healthcare facilities under medical siege.

By Doug Miller
While swine flu doesn’t differentiate by skin color or ethnicity, many urban neighborhoods do, and that, according to some preliminary reports, may mean African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately susceptible to the disease.

By Makani Themba-Nixon
Many children of color are trapped in underfunded schools where parents must fight for the most basic of needs: lighting, bathroom doors, books and even water.

Yes, water.