Women’s Health Today
September 23, 2011
Listen to the podcast
KUNM.org
RWJF Women’s Health Policy Unit Fall 2011 Brown Bag Series
RWJF Center for Health Policy
Women’s Health Policy Unit
Fall 2011 Brown Bag Lunch Series
October 12: Breast Health, Mammography and the ACA
November 9: Sex/Gender Implications of a Health Insurance Exchange
December 14: Office on Women’s Health Agenda: Research Topics for 2012 and Beyond
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
RWJF Center for Health Policy
1909 Las Lomas NE
Downstairs Conference Room
New: Community Birth Companion Collective
From Young Women United:
We have an incredible group of women of color who with education, energy and intention have shaped a Community Birth Companion Collective. Our Community Birth Companions now offer FREE and comprehensive support to women, babies, and their families.
Are you pregnant or do you know someone who is? Interested in pregnancy, birth and parenting? Come to our Sharing Circle on September 20th and meet our Birth Companions. All are welcome to join us in a conversation about ‘Sex, Sexuality and Mothering’.
Tuesday, September 20 · 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Nightingale Midwifery Clinic
123 Wellesley SE
Albuquerque, NM
Dinner will be provided. Gatherings will be held every 6 weeks.
Contact Micaela at 575.644.5830 or mcadena[at]youngwomenunited.org for more information.
Our Birth Companions move this work in two ways:
1) Through our one-on-one birth companion program, we will support individual women’s physical, mental, and emotional health through pregnancy, birth, and post-partum period. Our collective is designed to provide birth companion support for teen women, substance using women, incarcerated/ recently incarcerated women and poor/working poor women of color.
2) Through our Sister Sharing Circles, we will use a popular education model to learn about aspects of pregnancy, birth and parenting. We understand education to be a political act and a way to build strong women, strong families, and healthy communities. These conversations will be grounded in the understanding that every person carries experience and knowledge and the current realities of our communities are shaped by a relevant historical context.
YWU is also proud to be collaborating with the Nightingale Midwifery Clinic, we believe that all women in New Mexico deserve safe, respectful and confidential care during their pregnancies, labor, and postpartum period. We know that some women in New Mexico face great barriers to care, our midwifery clinic is designed to provide competent care in a dignified way, to women that may not otherwise access pregnancy services.
Offering affordable prenatal and postpartum care for you
and your baby, including well woman care and classes.
1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month, 4:00-7:00pm
No insurance needed, $10-$20 sliding scale,
Medicaid and some private insurance accepted.
Always safe, confidential care and plenty of time for questions and concerns.
Women’s Health Today: Birthing Options in New Mexico
Listen to the 30 second promo: Women’s Health Today Promo for September 23, 2011
Tune in to Women’s Health Today on September 23 at 8am on KUNM 89.9fm or online at www.kunm.org. The show will cover birthing options in New Mexico featuring interviews with Abigail Eaves of Dar A Luz Birth Center, Annette Lindeman of Lovelace Women’s Hospital, and two home birth midwives: Nandi Hill and Terry Simmons.
For more information on birthing options and midwifery in New Mexico:
NM Department of Health Midwife Roster
NM Midwives Association
American Association of Birth Centers
The Albuquerque Birth Center
Dar A Luz Birth Center
Northern New Mexico Midwifery/Birth Center
The Big Push for Midwives
New Mexico Midwives
Lovelace Women’s Hospital Natural Birthing Center
UNM Mother Baby Unit
Sex and Gender Implications of a NM Insurance Exchange
Gender Impacts Policy, a project of the non-profit Center of Southwest Culture, has submitted a report to the New Mexico Human Services Department under a federal health care reform planning grant on the sex and gender implications of a New Mexico health insurance exchange. The project director was Giovanna Rossi and project adviser was Dr. Justina Trott.
Sex-Gender Final Report June 2011
Sex and gender differences in health outcomes are significantly impacted by a person’s environment and cultural practices in diet, geography, education, social practices, and resource availability (especially economic). Consequently, there is need for analyzing the inter-relational impact of diversity and other social determinants of health in implementing sex- and gender-based programs to truly achieve health equity, and that such an analysis must be conducted at multiple levels of intervention (policy, planning, programs, services, and research).
This project utilizes a sex and gender lens to analyze barriers to health coverage, participation in a health insurance exchange, benefits and services, and customer information to assess the differential impact on women to achieve health equity. The benefit package of insurance products sold in a health insurance exchange and other health insurance exchange services will need to be designed to address the needs of and be accessible to populations of both men and women in all of their diversities.
For the purpose of our study and this report, sex and gender stakeholder population is defined as, and this project focuses on, input from diverse populations of women, including ethnicity, socio-economic status, age, abilities, geographic region, and sexual orientation. The stakeholder input methodology is designed to include people in greatest economic and social need, particularly low-income, minority, and rural individuals. The methodology includes four key informant interviews, seven focus groups, a policy forum, and a gender analysis of secondary sex-disaggregated data. A statewide stakeholder participant recruitment plan is developed, which includes input from Native Americans, Hispanic/Latinas, parents of transgendered teens, young women, low-income women, monolingual Spanish speakers, and rural women.
Key Recommendations for Establishing a Health Insurance Exchange
The recommendations presented here are organized around the core areas studied: health coverage, participation in a health insurance exchange, benefits and services, customer service, and gender roles. We then group themes that include cost; family impact; power structures and cultural barriers; information, knowledge and trust; and comprehensive, integrated and colocated services. And given the needs identified in this report, a Basic Health Plan (BHP) in New Mexico would benefit the population studied.
Women’s Health Today July 22, 2011 Podcast
Women’s Health Today
About Women, For Everyone
Friday July 22, 2011 8am MST Podcast
KUNM 89.9fm or www.kunm.org
Dr. Susan Wood on IOM Report and Birth Control
July 21, 2011
Statement from Dr. Susan Wood Regarding IOM Report that Recommends Eight Additional Women’s Health Preventive Services for Coverage
Statement from Susan F. Wood, PhD
Associate Professor of Health Policy
Director, Jacob Institute of Women’s Health
The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
Former Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health, FDA
Women know that preventive services for women includes family planning. Today the IOM confirmed that contraception is prevention and is part of the prevention package that should be covered by all health care plans. By reducing co-pays and deductibles for women getting contraception, this will help women and couples plan their families, space their children, reduce unintended pregnancies, and promote better health for women and children. Preventing unintended pregnancies is the best way to prevent abortion.
Women spend decades of their lives trying to prevent pregnancy, and only a few years actually trying to get pregnant and having children. Making contraception affordable by eliminating co-pays and deductibles is common sense for millions of women and couples across the country – and a real benefit that women will see immediately in their pocketbooks. This coverage of contraception will truly help “Close the Gaps” for women.
Contraception is not controversial – except sometimes for politicians. But this should not be political; coverage of contraception should be based on the evidence as outlined by IOM, which shows that contraception for women is indeed safe and effective prevention. Along with well-woman visits and critical screening for gestational diabetes, STDs, domestic violence, and other important women’s health preventive services, the IOM report “Closing the Gaps” has helped ensure that women’s health counts when we talk about prevention. Women should not be blocked from these critical preventive services due to cost or political debate.
Women’s Health Today – Access to Affordable Contraceptives
Women’s Health Today
About Women, For Everyone
Friday July 22, 2011 8am MST
KUNM 89.9fm or www.kunm.org
Listen to the promo here: wht-promo 7.22.11
How do sex and gender impact health? Does health policy adequately address systemic problems rooted in the relationships between patient, provider and insurer? Women’s Health Today looks at health from an interdisciplinary and woman-centered perspective, examining the many biological, psychological, environmental and social factors effecting health.
Tune in this Friday (7/22) at 8:00am MST for Women’s Health Today on KUNM 89.9fm or www.kunm.org. On the show I will discuss how health care reform will impact access to birth control. My guests include Judy Waxman of the National Women’s Law Center and Lois Uttley of MergerWatch and co-founder of Raising Women’s Voices. Listen to the promo here: wht-promo 7.22.11
KUNM Broadcast Times – 2011:
Friday, January 21st at 8:00am
Friday, April 22nd at 8:00am
Friday, July 22nd at 8:00am
Friday, September 23rd at 8:00am
Friday, December 23rd at 8:00am
Host: Giovanna Rossi
Let’s Start a Conversation About Health . . . and Not Talk About Health Care at All
A must for anyone working in health! It’s short, watch it.
New Study Shows that Looking at Sex Differences Can Benefit Both Men and Women
July 13, 2011|By Marissa Cevallos, HealthKey / For the Booster Shots blog
Cancer kills more men than women — some forms more than others, finds a new study.
In the new assessment of cancer data, men are more than twice as likely than women to die from lung, skin, kidney and liver cancers. Overall, not including sex-specific or breast cancers, men’s death rates are 1.9 times higher than women’s, according to the new research.
Scientists already knew men were at higher risk for developing most cancers, but it wasn’t clear if men also died more from cancer. Researchers from the National Cancer Institute pooled together cancer death rates between 1977 and 2006 from a large U.S. cancer database.
They found for the vast majority of cancers, men were more likely to die than women. Only three cancers kill more women than men (well, besides the ones men don’t get): the relatively rare peritoneum, omentum and mesentery; gall bladder; and anus, anal canal and anorectum cancers. The research was published online Tuesday in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.
The reason? It’s not necessarily that women are better than men at surviving cancer once they have it. The authors write in their discussion:
“This supports the idea that sex disparities in cancer mortality arise from the sex differences in cancer incidence. … It is feasible that differential environmental exposures and/or physiologic processes, such as sex hormones, could explain the observed sex disparities in survival.”
Such factors include differences in lifestyle. For example, the researchers found that men are more than five times as likely to die from lip and larynx cancers, two cancers linked to tobacco and heavy alcohol use.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/13/news/la-heb-cancer-men-women-20110713