Ladies, beware: this post is for all the guys out there. Feel free to share it with all the men in your life, because I’m betting you want to keep them around as long as possible. Most of them, anyway.

Guys, here’s the deal. It’s National Men’s Health Week, which gives me a great excuse to talk directly to you. I know you don’t like going to the doctor. I’m a doctor and I don’t like going to the doctor. But sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do things you don’t want to do – taking your partner to some fancy event rather than kicking back to watch football, cleaning the gutters rather than kicking back to watch football, going to the opera rather than watching paint dry, etc. This is one of those times.

You need to be as healthy as possible for obvious reasons – suddenly dropping dead puts a serious cramp in your weekend plans. Seriously, and especially if you and your partner are trying to have a baby, you’re going to need to be around for the next 20 years or so to help out: labor coaching, nighttime feedings and shouldering at least some of the estimated $250,000+ it’ll cost to get that baby through high school are just a few of the activities on your new dad to-do list.

So go get a checkup, especially if you and your partner are struggling with infertility. As much as our egos may hate to admit it, at least 30 percent of the time, the medical issue causing the problem is ours – and that fertility statistic holds true across all ethnicities. The good news is, in most cases, there are treatments that can help male infertility. We’ll even turn on the baseball game while you’re at the clinic - your partner will be so happy you’re there getting the medical care you need that she (or he – we’re equal opportunity) won’t think twice about the ESPN Sportscenter theme playing in the background.

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Why would a fertility clinic talk about Black History Month? For Fertility Partnership, the question is “why wouldn’t we?”

From the beginning, we’ve been focused on increasing access to infertility care for everyone regardless of ethnicity, gender or socioeconomic status. We know that African-Americans are 1.5 times more likely to struggle with infertility, and we also know that they are less likely to reach out for medical care to help with infertility.

We’ve written before about the reasons for this disparity, and some of the suspected reasons directly relate to the historical experiences people of color have had with the health care system. Whatever the reason, the health care industry – and fertility care providers in particular – need to be doing everything possible to overcome the problems of the past and reach out to African-Americans in a quest for better health care for all. Fertility Partnership is focused on leading that charge and doing all we can to help raise awareness and spur action, care and healing.

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I bet you didn’t know that January is Cervical Health Awareness Month (honestly, I didn’t either until recently, so I'm getting this information to you just under the wire!). You probably don’t spend too much time wondering about the health of your cervix. Let’s face it, other than your annual checkup and how far you’re dilated when you’re in labor, your cervix doesn’t come up for discussion too often. But, if you want to have children someday or you’re actively trying to conceive now, you need to be aware that cervical problems can affect fertility.

For example, did you know that cervical mucus can be “hostile”? Granted, it’s an over-the-top name, but it’s actually pretty accurate. Cervical mucus is vital in helping sperm travel from the vagina into the uterus, and it can be negatively affected by infection or past trauma such as procedures/surgeries to the cervix. Since some infections and most cervical trauma are completely asymptomatic, you may not even know there’s a problem until you have trouble getting pregnant.

You also can run into problems with recurrent miscarriage because of an incompetent cervix. If your cervix is too weak to support your growing uterus, miscarriage or premature labor and delivery can occur – a heartbreaking and frustrating outcome, especially if you’ve already struggled with infertility.

Additionally, your cervix may be compromised because you are a “DES daughter.” What’s that? From 1941 to 1972, many women were prescribed a drug called diethylstilbestrol (DES) to prevent miscarriage. Unfortunately, what the medical establishment realized was that DES was detrimental to both mother and child, increasing the risk of breast cancer in the mom and causing abnormalities in the reproductive systems of the babies. “DES daughters” – offspring of the women who took DES – face an increased risk of clear cell adenocarcinoma (CCA) of the vagina and cervix (although it’s still very rare), as well as reproductive tract structural differences that may cause infertility and/or difficulties with pregnancy. The youngest of the "DES daughters," however, are now 38, so this will eventually become a non-issue as these women move out of their childbearing years.

What can you do to reduce the odds that a cervical issue will cause infertility? Early detection is key, so make sure you have an annual checkup with your OB/GYN, and don’t let embarrassment hold you back from being open with your doctor about your health. Talk about any concerns you have or issues you suspect with your doctor – make sure you give them all the tools they need to help you protect your fertility and be as healthy as possible. If you need more information, check out the National Cervical Cancer public education campaign or the National Cervical Cancer Coalition. Or, I am always available to answer any questions or concerns you may have – email me at esimckes@fertilitypartnership.com or call me at 800.BabyToday.

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(Note: We welcome Fertility Partnership Executive Director Andria Simckes as a guest blogger.)

As Fertility Partnership grows its practice and continues to reach out to people of all ethnicities, we find ourselves battling some deeply held fears and beliefs about infertility in the African-American community. This is personally frustrating to me, because one of my key goals with helping my husband start Fertility Partnership was to lower the infertility rate among people of color. While overall, approximately one in seven couples experience infertility, the rate is 1.5 times higher in the African-American community, and that’s not acceptable to me.

Unfortunately, historical experience makes it hard for African-Americans to ask for help, or to even trust help that’s offered, for such a personal issue. According to psychologist Dr. Marva M. Robinson, utilization statistics clearly show that African-Americans often only seek medical help in the event of an emergency. This is probably due to a long-held distrust of the medical establishment after historical abuses such as the Tuskegee research project and the experience of Henrietta Lacks.

Additionally, we as a community don’t want to talk about infertility because we don’t want to “admit” that we as women are “broken” or that our men are “less of a man.” I understand the sentiment, but if we want to find real answers to the health problems that we face, we have to move past this. This secrecy is causing an immense amount of pain – both physical and emotional – and holding us back from finding real answers.

I’m focused on working to find solutions to these problems and helping African-Americans throw off the shame of infertility to get the help our community needs, but I need your input to help make real progress. I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this issue, either in the comments section of this blog post or by emailing me directly at adsimckes@fertilitypartnership.com. Let’s work together to reduce the soaring infertility rate in the African-American community.

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As I’ve mentioned before, one of the main reasons I created Fertility Partnership was to bring down the exorbitant costs of IVF and other fertility treatments. Advances in technology over the past few years have significantly reduced the hard costs – the direct costs of labor, equipment and supplies to conduct procedures. Think of it this way: 30 years ago, “mainframe” computers filled entire rooms and cost millions of dollars to install and keep running, and while their output was impressive at the time, it’s now seen as primitive and rudimentary. Today, the iPhone and iPad can do far more than these mainframe computers ever could, and their relatively inexpensive cost means that millions of people are able to afford them and do things even the creator of “Star Trek” never even imagined.

The same thing has happened to fertility technology. It now costs far less to do so much more and do it more accurately. Unfortunately, most infertility doctors haven’t passed those savings onto patients. Instead, they’ve steadily increased their profit margin while patients scrape, borrow and beg for the money to undergo fertility treatments.

With Fertility Partnership offering services that are usually 30-50 percent less than other practices, my goal is to shift that paradigm – but I tried to be realistic in my timeline for this, knowing that other practices would be reluctant to make this change for obvious reasons. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait nearly as long as I thought. I’ve noticed that many practices around the country are actively looking for ways to cut costs for their patients and increase accessibility to fertility services.

Some might think I’d be upset about this – that I’d see them as copycats trying to steal Fertility Partnership’s thunder. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. This trend to lower costs is exactly what I hoped for, because my ultimate goal is helping people who want to have babies get pregnant, regardless of their economic status.

No matter what the rest of the fertility care industry decides to do, Fertility Partnership is going to stay focused on helping begin families by using the latest technology to offer top quality, compassionate fertility care at a significantly lower cost. That’s our commitment to every single person who walks through the door at Fertility Partnership, and I hope my colleagues around the country embrace the same concept.

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