The Health of Women of Color

The vibrant cover of the Journal this month depicts the view from Lapidge Street of Maestrapeace, the Women's Building mural in San Francisco, California. The inspiration for this effort dates back to 1971, when a group of visionary women founded the San Francisco Women's Centers as a place for incubating women's projects. The Women's Building was purchased in 1979 and transformed into the first women-owned and -operated community center in the United States. Covering 2 external walls of the building, Maestrapeace is the culmination of a multi-cultural, multi-generational collaboration of 7 women artists whose colorful work of art sings to the community and serves as a visual testament to the diverse contributions of women through time and around the world. As with this month's issue of the Journal, the Women's Building celebrates the health of women of color inside and out. Maestrapeace includes vivid portraits of feminist leaders including Rigoberta Menchu, the recipient of the 1992 Nobel peace prize, and Audre Lorde, the writer of a provocative chronicle of her breast cancer experiences who helped break the silence around this all too prevalent disease. Byllye Avery, founder of the National Black Women's Health Project, has also bravely advanced the health of women of color, as related in her engaging piece “Who Does the Work of Public Health?” in these pages. Also in this issue, another celebrated feminist, Helen Rodriguez-Trias, is lifted up through Joyce Wilcox's moving account of a life courageously lived. The interior of the Women's Building is home to community-based organizations that offer a wide range of services to women and girls regardless of their age, sexuality, race, or class. These include programs that offer counseling and advocacy for battered women and for children of lesbian and gay parents, health care services for children, and leadership and economic development for young women. In their Field Action Report published this month, Diane Littlefield and her colleagues evaluate the success to date of Women's Health Leadership, a program designed to promote multicultural women leaders throughout California. By providing ongoing support for the educational development of health advocates, Women's Health Leadership underscores the importance of developing culturally diverse grassroots leaders who advocate for health solutions from within their communities. This special issue of the Journal devoted to “Women of Color” was conceived by Martha Hargraves, guest editor, as described in her poignant editorial, “Elevating the Voices of Rural Minority Women.” Published herein are 2 Public Health Matters papers that report on the conference she convened in May 2001 entitled “Eliminating Health Disparities Among Minority Women,” (Kritek et al., 580) and provide an overview of the social embeddedness of health (Williams, 588). In addition, all 8 papers in the forum “Rural Health and Women of Color,” were commissioned by Dr. Hargraves, as was Gail Wyatt's research report on why HIV disproportionately affects women of color. As with the Women's Building, we trust that this issue will open the discussion on ways to advance the health of women of color, call attention to our future health needs, and stand upon the shoulders of the heroines depicted herein

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Black women · Mural · Painting · Portrait · Race (biology) · Silence · Sociology · Women of color · Gender Studies · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology · History · Public Health Policies and Education