all women are aware of. They're aware of the symptoms.

They're aware that when we diagnose it early, it is almost always curable.

And that we're here to help.

The truth

is that that's actually the most common GI in cancer in the United States.

So it's four times more common than cervical cancer.

It's twice as common as ovarian cancer and as a due in on colleges.

That's what we see women with endometrial cancer every day.

And often we'll hear that women had never heard of it before they were diagnosed.

One of the cardinal signs of endometrial cancer is

vaginal bleeding that happens after menopause.

But also, it's really important to know that we're seeing more

and more endometrial cancer among younger women.

The really important thing to know about that symptom is that it doesn't

have to be a lot of bleeding.

It doesn't have to be something heavy or even painful.

A few drops of blood is enough to to prompt

an evaluation or to mean that you should be evaluated.

So I want women to know that a diagnosis of endometrial cancer is not a fatal life

sentence, that many, many women are diagnosed early

and with a combination of surgery and sometimes chemotherapy and radiation

over 80% of women diagnosed with endometrial cancer will survive.

I co-founded an organization called Icona, which is the Endometrial Cancer Action

Network for African-Americans

And part of the reason was that actually within endometrial cancer,

black women have a 90% higher mortality

rate than all other groups of women in the United States.

This is actually a larger difference in terms of a racial disparity

than we see in breast cancer and colon cancer.

Reason for this

really markedly high mortality among black women comes from a lot of things.

So part of it

definitely is the fact that simply people don't know about this condition.

Another reason is that the quality of our health care

system really isn't the same for black women than it is for everybody

else, especially when it comes to their reproductive health care.

So we've got a lot of work to do in the field in the world of bias.

And quality of care.

We don't know why, but black women do have a higher

likelihood of having more aggressive kinds of endometrial cancer.

In fact, that's the reason why black women should have the most awareness

and be ready to go in terms of symptoms and getting evaluated.

And we're working now on research to try to understand where that risk of the more

aggressive types come from, whether it's something environmental experience.

We're trying to figure that out.

What I want everybody to know is that these disparities

in endometrial cancer don't exist in a vacuum.

They exist among they exist in a whole spectrum of quality

of care of black women.

And once we decide as a medical profession and as a community, of black women

that we will not accept the lower quality care, that we will do whatever

it takes to make sure that our community of black women in this country

from all shapes and sizes survives and thrives in their reproductive health.

We will get there and we'll meet that goal