By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff WriterThe “strong Black woman” stereotype, a deeply ingrained cultural concept, often pressures Black women to suppress emotions and prioritize the needs of others over their own health. She committed to learning more about gold standard research, research terminology and how information is weighed after it has been gathered. “Black women die at 41% higher rates from breast cancer than white women do,” she says. “Even though the number of women surviving cancer has improved exponentially, there’s still this disparity in mortality between Black women and white women. “I’m a Black woman and I can’t be anything other than a Black woman,” she says.