HealthTALK

Your Feet May Be Warning You Before Your Life Forces You to Listen.

"The symptoms women learn to work around can become the symptoms they can no longer afford to ignore."

There is a particular kind of competence many women know well. You wake up tired and still make the meeting. Your ankle hurts, so you change shoes. Your feet are swollen, so you put them up later. The tingling comes and goes, so you decide it can wait. There is a business to run, a career to protect, children or parents who need you, deadlines that will not move and people who have become accustomed to you being the person who manages everything.

Our feet carry us through almost every part of our working and personal lives, yet they are among the easiest parts of the…

Black Girls Wait 16 Years for a Diagnosis Most GPs Miss in One Appointment

Sixteen years. That is the average gap between a girl's first symptoms of an undiagnosed bleeding disorder and the day someone finally names it, often after years of being told her periods are simply "heavy" and not investigated.

For Black girls, that wait sits inside a wider pattern. They are disproportionately hospitalised for heavy menstrual bleeding, yet still less likely to receive the one evaluation that could catch the cause early. This is not a story about biology. It is a story about what gets asked, believed and acted on  and what does not. 

This post unpacks the latest evidence, looks at what universities are doing about period poverty and most importantly offers practical steps mothers, professionals and young women can take today.

The Scale of the Problem

Why Sickle Cell Disease Is a Workplace Issue, Not Just a Health One.

Every September, Sickle Cell Awareness Month asks the public to understand a condition that has been part of Black communities for generations but has only recently started getting the attention, funding and workplace consideration it deserves.

For Black women in particular, who are disproportionately likely to be both patients and primary caregivers, sickle cell disease (SCD) sits at an exhausting intersection. An invisible illness, layered onto a healthcare system that too often does not believe their pain, layered onto workplaces that were not built with fluctuating, unpredictable conditions in mind.

Invisible Illness Meets Invisible Bias

SCD is the UK's most common and fastest-growing genetic blood disorder, affecting an estimated 15,000–17,500 people, with around 250 new cases diagnosed each year. It predominantly affects people of Black African and Caribbean heritage. The disease itself is punishing. Rigid, sickle-shaped red…

Let’s Talk

What Sexual Health Week 2026 Means for Our Community.

Sexual Health Week is a UK-wide campaign, currently led by the charity Brook, running 14–20 September 2026 under the theme "Let's Connect!" It is about rebuilding real conversations with partners, with our children, with ourselves. In a culture of ghosting, scrolling and half-truths picked up online.

For the NBWN, this is not an abstract awareness week. It sits directly on top of data that shows Black women, on both sides of the Atlantic, carry a disproportionate share of the burden and the reasons are structural, not behavioural.

The Evidence