JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, another installment
of our weekly series Brief But Spectacular.
Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison are the
founders of the nonprofit GirlTrek.
It's part of their mission is to reduce the
leading causes of preventable death among
African-American women.
T. MORGAN DIXON, Co-Founder, GirlTrek: Black
women are dying faster and at higher rates
than any other group in American from obesity-related
diseases.
We carry the trauma in our bones from systemic
racism.
We carry the trauma in our bones from serving
other people before we serve ourselves, and
that has to stop now.
So, GirlTrek asks women to reclaim 30 minutes
a day to their own personal self-care and
to be a freedom fighter for themselves and
their communities.
VANESSA GARRISON, Co-Founder, GirlTrek: That.
(LAUGHTER)
VANESSA GARRISON: I am grateful, like many
black women in this country, to have been
raised by a village of black women.
My grandmother and my aunties stepped in when
my mother wasn't available to care for me.
And in that stepping in, they sacrificed so
much.
And I lost my grandmother at 66 years old
to a heart attack.
I have lost two aunts before the age of 60.
The crisis is taking the women from my family
at an age that just feels very unfair to me.
T. MORGAN DIXON: GirlTrek is the largest health
organization in the country for black women.
We are reclaiming the streets of black neighborhoods,
one woman at a time.
Our goal is to rally one million black women
to walk to save their lives.
VANESSA GARRISON: Eighty percent of black
women are over a healthy body weight; 53 percent
are obese.
More than two-thirds of black women get little
to no leisure time, physical activity.
And the most heartbreaking of all, one in
two black girls born in 2,000 are projected
to get diabetes, unless levels of activity
or diet changes.
T. MORGAN DIXON: You know there's a hashtag
#trustblackwomen.
And I would encourage you to do that, because
black women from Alabama, to Bree Newsome,
who climbed the flagpole, all the way back
to Anita Hill, have been like charting the
way forward for social change.
VANESSA GARRISON: For the record, black women
love the way they look, and black women are
extraordinarily beautiful.
And we come in all shapes and sizes.
But black women are oftentimes hiding from
a lot of the things that they have experienced,
and our bodies have experienced a lot of trauma,
and we do not have a lot of extra time in
our lives to exercise.
It's not a woman's individual decision to
wake up every day and say, I don't want to
exercise.
It's actually, I'm working two jobs to put
food on the table, I'm taking care of my children,
I'm being a loving mother, I want to give
love to my spouse.
And then, in all of that, where do I then
find the time to prioritize myself?
So, GirlTrek, for those women, is instructional.
Every single day, we give women first the
permission, second, the language, and then
third the practical instructions.
How do you carve out time for yourself every
day?
How do you communicate to your friends and
your family that you should be a priority?
What do you do when you have the 30 minutes
for yourself?
How do you knit all of those things together,
so that it benefits you, your family, and
your community?
My name is Vanessa Garrison.
T. MORGAN DIXON: And I'm Morgan Dixon.
VANESSA GARRISON: And this is our Brief But
Spectacular take...
T. MORGAN DIXON: ... on mobilizing black women
to save their own lives.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Remember that, GirlTrek.
