(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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(Note: We welcome Fertility Partnership Executive Director Andria Simckes in writing her first guest post for Dr. Simckes' blog.)

Misperceptions are sometimes hurtful, occasionally dangerous, and often get in the way of getting what we really want in our lives. The misperceptions about African-Americans and infertility are a perfect case in point.

For example, it’s a common perception that black women are incredibly fertile. They couldn’t possibly have problems with infertility, right? Wrong. In fact, according to RESOLVE, the infertility rate among African-Americans is nearly 1.5 times higher than other races. Unfortunately, that’s a statistic that very few people, especially black women, know. As a result, they suffer in silence when they can’t conceive, believing – even more so than other ethnic groups – that they’re all alone in their infertility.

And what about black men? That infertility rate statistic includes them, too, but that’s an even more taboo topic than black female infertility. Black men are supposed to be virile and sexually powerful – they couldn’t possibly have infertility problems, could they? Yes, they can. About one-third of the time when couples are struggling with infertility, the problem lies with the man, no matter the ethnicity. But again, how many black men haven’t even taken a simple, relatively inexpensive test to see if there is a problem, simply because of the misperception?

As African-Americans, we need to take the lead in doing everything we can to shake off these harmful misperceptions about our fertility. We need to demand more medical studies to fully understand why African-Americans suffer from infertility in such inflated numbers – current research is woefully inadequate and doesn’t give doctors enough information on which to base effective treatment protocols. We need to do all we can to spread the word about the sheer prevalence of infertility in our communities, and share the good news that – in many cases – help is out there.

Finally, we need to strip the stigma away from infertility. If you are black and battling infertility, you are not alone. You do not need to hide it. You do not need to just hope it will go away. Doctors like my husband and clinics like Fertility Partnership are out there ready to help with compassion and understanding.  Support is available through websites like The Broken Brown Egg. Let’s crush these misperceptions and turn the lights on a situation that’s been hiding in the dark for far too long.

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When I first began thinking about opening Fertility Partnership back in 2007, I knew I wanted to do things a little differently than many other fertility clinics in the U.S. I wanted to create a refuge for people stuck in the nightmare of infertility, and I wanted to make that refuge available to as many people as possible, regardless of their ethnic, cultural or economic backgrounds.

Why? Because I’d tried to comfort too many sobbing patients over the years who needed fertility treatments and couldn’t afford them. Because I’d seen too many patients mortgage their homes, take leave from their jobs, and leave the comfort of their extended families to travel abroad and get more affordable IVF in other countries. Because I knew in many cases fertility medicine had the tools to help, but not the cultural sensitivities or the compassion for the unique issues faced by minority patients.

It took a few years, but I’m grateful to everyone who helped transform Fertility Partnership from a thought into reality. Today, after nearly nine months in business (a meaningful amount of time for doctors like me!), Fertility Partnership is honored to care for women and men from all ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds. Whether a celebrity or an “Average Joe” from the heartland, our compassion and our determination to provide the highest quality care at the most affordable price possible remains the same.

Along the way, we’ve run into our fair share of detractors and naysayers – people both in and out of the fertility care industry who said it couldn’t be done. Interestingly, I’ve found that the people who’ve protested the loudest are those who most strongly wish to keep the status quo in the fertility industry. I don’t, because I know we can do better for our patients – in terms of both quality and cost. Fertility Partnership is living proof of that, and I’m grateful to all the patients who have given us the opportunity to put our philosophy into highly successful action. I hope the entire fertility care industry will join us in continuing to work to increase access to fertility care for everyone, regardless of ethnicity, culture or economic status.

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As politicians continue to sling mud over health care reform in Washington, Fertility Partnership is taking what I think will be a slightly faster path in an effort to change the system. Our mission is simple: we want to help more couples afford fertility treatments and achieve their dreams of having a baby, especially those who’ve largely been ignored by the medical establishment. Among the most neglected groups – minority ethnicities such as African-Americans and Latinos.  

Too many people feel as if fertility care, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), is out of reach. For many, Fertility Partnership is changing that. We are dramatically bringing down the costs – not nickel-and-diming patients – and we’re talking with people who have never before been reached with this message.

Last year, $4.4 billion was spent in the fertility industry, but few minorities accessed these services. Sometimes the block is cultural, sometimes religious, and sometimes it’s a language barrier, but most often it’s just too much money. We don’t have concrete numbers on minorities that are using fertility services, but we do know it’s very limited. It's certainly not helped by the information one finds on the Web. If you look at infertility blogs or the websites for the big fertility clinics nationwide, minorities are virtually non-existent.

Fertility Partnership wants to make high-quality health care affordable. The cost of fertility treatments has come down dramatically, but the savings are not being passed along to patients. There’s no point in having this remarkable technology to help families have babies if the average person can’t afford it, and there’s certainly no point in ignoring large sections of our country’s population who need fertility services.

Fertility Partnership exists to help everyone – no matter what their ethnicity, culture, religion or sexual orientation – begin the family of their dreams. If you belong to a community or religious group that would like to hear more about fertility care in general or specific infertility issues related to your group, please contact our office or email me at esimckes@fertilitypartnership.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . I welcome any opportunity to share more and help make fertility care accessible and affordable to all.

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