Many participants expressed greater concern about cancer than cardiovascular disease, which seems consistent with an AHA study in which African American women were more likely than White women to incorrectly name cancer as women’s leading cause of death instead of cardiovascular disease (Mosca, Hammond, Mochari-Greenberger, Towfighi, & Albert, 2013). These concerns may reflect the reality that African American women are
diagnosed at a later stage and have greater mortality from breast cancer than White women. Interventions to improve stroke awareness must respect these concerns while providing accurate information about the number of African American women
who have strokes each year and the toll of stroke on quality of life. In addition, the sense among participants that stroke happens all at once, as opposed to the hidden nature of cancer, suggests the need to provide information to African American women about how risk factors such as hypertension and diabetes cause bodily changes over
time that could lead to stroke