For Immediate Release
June 15, 2009
Contact Information

UnitedHealthcare
Dan Miller
714-226-3726
dan.miller@phs.com

( BPRW) UnitedHealthcare's Corliss Hill Receives American Stroke Associations National Power Award

"¢Award Recognizes Hill's and UnitedHealthcare's Efforts to Raise Awareness of Stroke Among the African American Community

(BLACK PR WIR) (June 15, 2009) ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Corliss Hill, national director of UnitedHealthcare’s Generations of Wellness, received a National Power Award by the American Stroke Association (ASA), a division of the American Heart Association, for her efforts in raising awareness of stroke among the African American community.

Hill received her award at the American Stroke Associations 2009 Power Awards gala held Friday, June 12, at the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead in Atlanta. Other awardees included Grammy Award Winning Gospel singer and television host Dr. Bobby Jones; Elder Bernice A. King, minister, orator and daughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and a host of other health advocates.

Each year, 100,000 African Americans die from stroke, a rate that is nearly two-times higher than Caucasians, said Rani Whitfield, M.D., board certified family practitioner and American Stroke Association volunteer. We simply must provide every mechanism possible to ensure people understand the devastating effects of these statistics. With the National Power Award, the American Stroke Association thanks Corliss Hill and UnitedHealthcare for their tremendous effort in helping us educate and empower our communities.

UnitedHealthcare and Generations of Wellness support the American Stroke Associations efforts to reach out to African Americans to help reduce the risk of stroke, said Hill. The National Power Award reflects UnitedHealthcare’s ongoing commitment to help African Americans learn more about stroke and get to the root of their families health, which ultimately helps to create a healthier future for generations to come. I am grateful to the American Stroke Association for recognizing our commitment.

As director of the Generations of Wellness initiative, Hill oversees UnitedHealthcare’s national effort to improve the health care outcomes of African Americans by providing health education and access to quality health care services. For more than three years, the Generations of Wellness program has provided Power To End Stroke campaign materials to its African American customers across the country, as well as the public, to help them take charge of their health and reduce their risk of stroke.

In addition, UnitedHealthcare and the American Stroke Association partnered in an effort to encourage African Americans to trace their family health history with the Shape Your Family History Tree, an easy-to-use online tool that enables people to document and track their family’s health history including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and high cholesterol.

Available at www.uhcgenerations.com and www.powertoendstroke.org, the Shape Your Family History Tree encourages individuals to print the form and share it with their doctors and families to learn how to reduce their and their families risk of suffering a stroke.

African Americans have almost twice the risk of first-ever stroke compared with non-Hispanic whites, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The age-adjusted stroke incidence rates at ages 45-84 are 6.6 per 1,000 in black males (vs. 3.6 in white males) and 4.9 in black females (vs. 2.3 in white females).

Approximately 795,000 Americans each year suffer a new or recurrent stroke; on average, a stroke occurs every 40 seconds, according to the American Stroke Association. About one of every 17 deaths is due to stroke, which is the No. 3 cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. Among the risk factors for stroke are high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and smoking. Medical and disability expenses related to strokes cost the U.S. nearly $69 billion per year.

More information about the American Stroke Associations Power To End Stroke campaign is available online at www.strokeassociation.org/power. More information about UnitedHealthcare’s Generations of Wellness is available at www.uhcgenerations.com.

About the American Stroke Association
Created in 1997 as a division of the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association works to improve stroke prevention, diagnosis and treatment to save lives from stroke America’s No. 3 killer and a leading cause of serious disability. To do this, we fund scientific research, help people better understand and avoid stroke, encourage government support, guide healthcare professional, and provide information to stroke survivors and their caregivers to enhance their quality of life. To learn more, call 1-888-4STROKE or visit strokeassociation.org.

About UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare (www.unitedhealthcare.com) provides a full spectrum of consumer-oriented health benefit plans and services to individuals, public sector employers and businesses of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 100 companies. The company organizes access to quality, affordable health care services on behalf of more than 25 million individual consumers, contracting directly with approximately 590,000 physicians and care professionals and more than 4,900 hospitals to offer them broad, convenient access to services nationwide. UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified Fortune 50 health and well-being company.
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