“Heart disease prevention and education has always been near and dear to my heart, to the organization’s work, and a huge part of one of the most seminal works that we do for the community,” says Lisa Peyton, the founder, president and CEO of the Foundation For Black Women’s Wellness. “Through our Wear Red Day event, we have touched at least 1,000 women’s lives over 15 years, each year delivering the same message in a new and different way, with the goal of preventing heart disease, which is the number one health risk for Black women in Dane County, in Wisconsin, and across the United States.”
The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness will host the 15th Annual Wear Red Day Observance & Awareness Celebration on Saturday, Feb. 21, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at the Goodman Community Center on Madison’s East Side. It’s a day of camaraderie and sisterhood, raising awareness and educating women about heart disease, and offering tips and strategies to protect heart health from expert guest speakers and presenters.
“It’s amazing to reach this milestone of 15 years,” Peyton tells Madison365 at an interview at The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness headquarters on Madison’s West Side. “It makes me reflect on just how long we’ve been doing this work and how critical it’s been, how many lives we’ve touched. We love to hear, year after year, how motivated and rejuvenated people feel to keep going after attending this event.”
The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness works to empower Black women and girls to build and sustain healthy, thriving, wellness-centered lives. Its mission is to eliminate health disparities and other barriers impacting the lives of African American women, and to establish a culture of wellness through education, outreach, support circles, powerful partnerships, and by influencing systemic change.
Wear Red Day started in 2012 in the Evjue Room of the Urban League of Greater Madison on Madison’s South Side with about 15 women. Peyton was inspired to start Wear Red Day, much like she was inspired to start The Foundation For Black Women’s Wellness, to honor her mother, Roberta Peyton, who died of congestive heart failure in 2006 at the age of 64. She battled the disease for more than 15 years.
Christine Russell, the director of Health & Wellness Programs with the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness, tells Madison365 that she really enjoys the camaraderie of the event.
“The most exciting part is the sisterhood, and that everyone who’s there has been impacted in one way or another, and it looks different,” Russell says. “We just got off the phone with a young lady. She’s 28 years old. She’s now three years in remission, if you will, for the broken heart syndrome. And they said that she had pneumonia, and that she was just stressed out, and she needed to calm down. It turns out she was in heart failure. So at 28 years old, no kids, she does have a history of cardiac incidents in her family, but she was saying she was like, ‘I want to be around people that look like me that I can share my story with and say, ‘Don’t do what I did. Start the cardio now, start reducing the salt now. So you don’t have to be in my shoes.’
“So I think sharing the stories of heart disease and all the different faces that it affects is the most impactful part of my day at Wear Red Day,” she adds.
(Photo by A. David Dahmer)
Over the years, the Wear Red Day event has been consistently and purposely a multi-generational event.
“That’s been important to us that this is really a family-centered event where we invite folks to bring their entire household across all age spans. So it’s wonderful to see mothers, grandmothers, daughters, aunts, and, of course, mothers bringing their children,” Peyton says. “Even young men and fathers and husbands who decide to attend with their partners or families hear this information and can apply it as a support to the women that they’re there with or to their own lives.
“It becomes this ripple effect of folks learning and changing and preventing and improving their lives and health together. One of the intergenerational pieces that we really want to drill down on is younger women coming to the event and being a part of the Wear Red Day messaging, because we know that heart disease impacts Black women younger,” Peyton adds. “The onset of the disease is earlier. The risk of early death is greater. And for that reason, starting as soon as we possibly can with education is vital, and educating folks on all of the preventative steps that they need to take, how to engage with their healthcare providers, how to be proactive, and how to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors.”
Dr. Michelle Robinson, chief programs and partnerships officer for the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness, will be a featured speaker at the Wear Red Day event. She tells Madison365 that one of the challenges about chronic disease, especially the so-called preventative diseases, is that diagnosis often comes with shame and embarrassment. “The solution is that we actually need to turn the tables around those diagnoses, and that usually requires community and support,” she says. “It’s not something that we can do by ourselves, and so that becomes a barrier to sometimes getting people into places, but it also is the reason why that Wear Red Day space is so important.”
Robinson says that they have been trying to normalize spaces where women can talk about these health issues … where they can also help folks understand that a diagnosis isn’t your end story.
“That’s the beginning. It’s a part of your story. But it doesn’t have to be the end. Generally speaking, if we’re talking about some forms of heart disease, some things can be done to either shift you to remission — I am proof positive myself as person who’s now heading to four years remission with both diabetes and hypertension — or at least put you in a place where you’re improving your metrics, which also has huge implications for your quality of life and your longevity,” Robinson says.
This year, the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness will make a big announcement at Wear Red Day that they don’t want anybody to miss. At the 15th Annual Wear Red Day Observance & Awareness Celebration, Dr. Robinson will share updates on the Foundation’s expanding heart health work and unveil a major new initiative that will reshape cardiac care and support for women in Dane County.
There will also be exciting prizes and a live DJ. Wear Read Day will close with a grand prize giveaway, valued at over $250.
“We are adding interactive elements this year. We really want the audience to get involved,” Peyton says. “We want them to be a part of the conversation, and we want everyone to leave knowing how to take action when they leave Wear Red Day,.”
The theme this year, Russell says, is “putting our heart health into action.”
“We want to ensure that we’re providing nutritious foods, balanced foods that are realistic for our guests to make at home. And then also having movement moments kind of sprinkled throughout the experience,” Russell says. “So people will be coming in their red workout gear, ready to move, ready to be active, because we want to provide a safe space for them to realize that moving our bodies is something that’s realistic, it’s feasible. It’s something that we can do.”
Peyton says that she and many members of her team take heart disease prevention seriously because they have witnessed the impacts on their own lives, in the lives of their families and in the people in their neighborhood.
“We have tangible solutions that they can plug into immediately,” Peyton says. “We don’t just deliver information and education. They can then sign up for any number of programs or opportunities to begin immediately to participate in wellness classes, health education support groups, walking collectives, and also make those important connections with people.
“We’ve learned that once you educate and empower one woman with the knowledge and information, she then becomes a conduit to educate others in her family, her network,” Peyton adds. “Women who have come to this event multiple times bring others with them when they come. So that natural ripple effect of folks learning together and then going back home and implementing new behaviors, it really does have an immediate and a long-term impact on how women are making choices in their lives to be healthier.”
Peyton says that one of the most beautiful parts of Wear Red Day is the testimonies she receives from real women who talk about how being at the event has been a changing point for themselves … a beginning to improved heart health and overall improved quality of life.
“It’s a day of being in the presence of other women committed to living differently and then getting connected to the Foundation and all of our programs and services that they have access to year-round, free and low cost,” she says. “We provide everything that they need to be able to actually make actionable the things that we talk about and teach in that very lovely, high-impact event.”
The group photo of everybody at the event at Wear Red Day is always a highlight.
“Each year, the Wear Red Day message touches new women and new lives and creates this opportunity for people to be informed, make a change, and to preserve their lives. And that’s the point of the event,” Peyton says. “The gathering and generational joy is where all the power and beauty are.”
To register for the 15th annual Wear Red Day, click here.
