Health (Photo credit: 401(K) 2013)

By Jessica Cumberbatch Anderson

For her 40th birthday in October 2011, Khadijah Tribble had one wish: to jump out of an airplane.

“I had been planning the event for four months,” Tribble recalled.

The jump never happened. But it wasn’t because of a last-minute fear of heights or poor weather. It was the excess body weight she was carrying. At more than 300 pounds, she was 70 pounds over the skydiving company’s recommended weight.

For African-American girls who grew up in her hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, being “big-boned,” or “thick,” was something to be desired. Her cousins, who were thinner, “had a tougher time than [she] did as a big girl, because people were always referring to them as ‘stick and bones,’ and telling them they needed to go eat,” she said.

According to 2011 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Tribble’s home state ranks second in the United States (behind Mississippi) in the prevalence of obesity. Thirty-two percent of Alabama’s adult population qualifies as either obese or overweight.

For Tribble, the skydive that never happened was the wake-up call of her life. She had a serious talk with her health care provider. And in December 2012, she decided to undergo gastric bypass surgery. Since then, she has dropped nearly 80 pounds. What’s more, she has become an advocate for healthy living in her predominantly African-American community in Washington, D.C.

Her story is one of the millions that highlights the close calls, cultural norms and tough conversations about health happening across Black America, as one epidemic gives way to another and the community struggles to fight back.

Read More  Black Health Rx: Finding A Cure For America’s Health Disparities.