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After winning five Grammys and releasing 20 top 10 hit songs in the 1980s with The Judds, Naomi announced her retirement in 1990. The singer revealed that she had been diagnosed with hepatitis C, which she contracted from an infected needle during her time working as a nurse.
"When I was told I had hepatitis C, I was on top of the world, selling out arenas," Naomi said at an event at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey in 2016, according to The Daily Record newspaper in Morris County, NJ. "Then I was told I had three stinkin' years to live."
In 1991, she founded the Naomi Judd Education and Research Fund to raise awareness of hepatitis C, and she also went on to become a spokesperson for the American Liver Foundation.