Yonkers woman is a guest at State of the Union

Cheryl Brannan of Yonkers, who founded the nonprofit Sister to Sister International (STSI) and has been a longtime advocate for women’s health, was a guest of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for President Biden’s State of the Union address at the Capitol on Feb. 7.

Brannan was one of those who supported Schumer in his securing $1 million to fund renovations to maternal labor and infant delivery space at St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers.

“When Cheryl and the frontline workers at St. John”™s Riverside raised alarms on the maternal health crisis I promised them I would not stop fighting until they got the funding needed to make critical renovations to the maternity ward to improve the care for the over 1,300 moms who come through the maternity unit every year,” Schumer said.

STSI was established in 1994. A 2019 report by the organization found that Black women in the Hudson Valley were 2.3 times more likely to experience complications during birth than were other women.

In July of last year, Schumer held a news conference at St. John’s Riverside Hospital during which he appeared with Brannan and pledged to propose measures to fight the maternal health crisis locally in Yonkers and to address racial disparities in the maternal health outcomes more broadly.