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EVERYTHING
One Way to Help Women? Clean Up the Data
What: McKinsey has updated its report on closing the women’s health gap, examining nine conditions that cause early death or significant distress and potential disability. The first major recommendation they make? Actually counting women, in part by ensuring the data collected can be analyzed by biological sex.
Key line: “Women are not small men: sex-disaggregated data and analyses allow better understanding of why and how interventions work differently in men and women, as well as the different effects of interventions attributed to sex and sex-specific physiology. The Forum and MHI analysis found that only around 10 percent of clinical trials for ischemic heart disease and migraine published sex-disaggregated data.”
Source: McKinsey
Endometriosis: Not Just a Uterus Problem
What: Scientific American looks at how endometriosis is being recognized not just as a gynecologic condition.
Key line: “’In the past three to five years there’s been a complete reframing of this disorder as a neuroinflammatory whole-body condition,’ says reproductive biologist Philippa Saunders of the University of Edinburgh. ‘It isn’t just about a little bit of tissue stuck in the wrong place. Your whole body has reacted.’ …The medical profession’s habit of restricting health issues to narrow silos—traditionally, only gynecologists saw endometriosis patients—hasn’t helped. ‘We chop up human health into specialties and systems, but we know now that [those systems are] much more interconnected than we had presumed,’ says Stacey Missmer, a reproductive biologist at Michigan State University.”
Source: Scientific American
Remembering Cecile Richards
What: Cecile Richards, the powerhouse leader of Planned Parenthood, died yesterday at age 67 from brain cancer. Ilyse Hogue, the former president of NARAL, remembers her in a poignant essay.
Key line: “Cecile never flinched. She occupied the position with a zealousness of a missionary and the certainty of an oracle. Her aggressive warnings about the state of abortion care were dismissed by some as hysterical and shrill before becoming apparently prescient as the attacks on reproductive health care ramped up in President Obama’s second term.”
Source: Time Magazine
PREGNANCY + POSTPARTUM
The One Man Stopping Wisconsin Moms from Getting Medicaid Postpartum
What: Only two states in the country have yet to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid coverage to postpartum moms for a year after birth—Wisconsin and Arkansas. Wisconsin actually has support from Republicans in the state legislature, but their leader, Speaker Robin Vos, simply won’t let them vote on it.
Key line: “Without Vos’ approval, [Republican state Rep. Clint] Moses said it’s not likely that lawmakers will secure a 12-month extension, but he’s hopeful that an extension of at least six or nine months can be agreed to in this year’s state budget, despite the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ indication that anything less than 12 months would not be approved.”
Source: Wisconsin Watch
ONCOLOGY
Women Reporting Cancer Screenings Drops
What: A massive global survey on women’s health from Gallup and Hologic found for the first time in four years the number of women who say they were screened for cancer has decreased. Just 10% of women said they were screened for cancer in 2023, compared to 12% in 2020 and 2021.
Key line: “Almost all the declines in testing in 2023 took place among women over 40, who are at higher risk of developing cancer. Although other studies show cancer diagnoses are rising among younger adults, older adults (particularly those aged 65 and older) are more likely to account for new cases in coming decades.”
Source: Gallup
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