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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(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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