Every Beat Counts: Black Heart Health Perspectives

Sign up for our acclaimed free newsletter Editorially Black with the top Racial Equity stories of the day to your inbox! “Even to this day, if my body goes completely calm, I’m afraid my heart is going to stop,” said Michelle Allison, a clinical supervisor at the Positron Emission Tomography Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.   In 2006, Allison was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, which is when the heart’s main pumping chamber becomes enlarged, stalling blood flow to the heart. Despite taking several medications and undergoing treatments to stabilize her heart rate, Allison still struggles with feelings of fear and anxiety stemming from the day she was diagnosed.  “The biggest lifestyle change was watching what you eat and watching what you drink to be able to survive to the next day or not throw yourself into congestive heart failure,” said Allison. “That’s a very difficult thing for me because I threw myself into heart failure almost weekly because I couldn’t understand it. Now, I haven’t had heart failure in years.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the primary cause of death in the United States is heart disease, which encompasses several types of heart conditions....