Vanessa Bell Calloway, Free, Essence Atkins and Director Lisa Cunningham Spread Breast Cancer Awareness

The Black Women’s Health Imper­a­tive Non Prof­it announced the launch of The “POWER OF SURE 2.0”  a short pro­mo – nar­rat­ed by Mary J Blige, and an in-per­son round­table dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing Vanes­sa Bell Cal­loway, Essence Atkins, Free Marie (for­mer­ly from 106th & Park), mod­er­at­ed by Egypt Sher­rod.

These ladies have come togeth­er to enlight­en and encour­age Black women to take con­trol of their health, get reg­u­lar check ups and know what is hap­pen­ing with their bod­ies.

These women have per­son­al sto­ries and strug­gles with Breast Can­cer, Mary J Blige lost an aunt to the ter­ri­ble dis­ease, Vanes­sa Bell Cal­loway is a first hand sur­vivor, Free Marie lost her moth­er to breast can­cer and recent­ly Essence Atkins’ moth­er bat­tled breast can­cer dur­ing the quar­an­tine. Breast can­cer can be espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous for Black women: It has a 40 per­cent high­er mor­tal­i­ty rate for them, over white women. “Ear­ly detec­tion is key. We have to get to know our bod­ies and stay on top of our reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled mam­mo­grams.” said Free Marie. Lisa Cun­ning­ham, Head of  Dig­i­tal Con­tent for BWHI and the direc­tor of POWER OF SURE 2.0 adds, “This kind of  work is impor­tant, it lit­er­al­ly can be the dif­fer­ence between life and death; that’s why I’m com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue cre­at­ing con­tent that speaks to Health and Social aware­ness issues that are cru­cial to Black Women. 

POWER OF SURE 2.0  was direct­ed by Lisa Cun­ning­ham  and pro­duced by Radiant3 for the Black Women’s Health Imper­a­tive in part­ner­ship with Holog­ic for Project Health Equal­i­ty. For more infor­ma­tion about the Pow­er of Sure  ini­tia­tive and to lis­ten to the round­table dis­cus­sion, vis­it the web­site at https://besure.bwhi.org 

You can also join the con­ver­sa­tion by con­nect­ing via social media on Twit­ter, Insta­gram and Face­book (@blkwomenhealth) using the hash­tags #powerof­sure and #blk­wom­en­shealth .

ABOUT Black Women’s Health Imper­a­tive Non Prof­it

We are the only nation­al orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to improv­ing the health and well­ness of our nation’s 22 mil­lion Black women and girls – phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and finan­cial­ly. We believe that all black women and girls should enjoy opti­mal health and well-being in a social­ly just soci­ety. Our mis­sion is to lead the effort to solve the most press­ing health issues that affect Black women and girls in the U.S. Through invest­ments in evi­dence-based strate­gies, we deliv­er bold new pro­grams and advo­cate health-pro­mot­ing poli­cies.