On June 2nd, 2013, XX in Health, in partnership with Rock Health, will host our third XX Retreat on the East Coast, bringing together our growing communities in Boston, New York and DC. This one-day, invitation-only event is a transformational and multi-generational gathering of 120 female visionaries in healthcare including entrepreneurs, executives, and public sector officials.

Attendees include:

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On April 17, 2012, I became a citizen of the United States and earned my right to vote. Leading up to this date, I became increasingly aware of my rights and limitations as an immigrant and the stigmas created by those limitations. There were certain privileges—such as voting in presidential elections—in which I had not been allowed to participate and would later in 2012 be able to express my opinion for the first time.

I was empowered! The more I learned about the risks we faced as women in the upcoming election, the more horrified I became. I wondered how deeply my life would be affected if Roe vs. Wade was overturned. Free birth control was so equalizing, it didn’t seem real. Women’s reproductive health choices were so precariously balanced—not in my hands, but in the hands of a government that so fearfully wanted to turn things back to how it was decades ago! (more…)

This weekend, the new Star Trek movie opened in theaters and hundreds of thousands of moviegoers lost themselves for two hours in a vividly-imagined future in which humankind finally breaches “the final frontier.”

As for me, I prefer the more immediate, but no less exciting, frontiers that modern, cutting-edge technology is making possible.  In the field of health care, for example, we don’t have to wait for an era in which a Starfleet Command exists in order to see entire populations achieve better health and longer lives through devices that only existed in imagination as recently as a decade ago.

This week, Disruptive Women in Health Care is a proud partner of the HealthBeat Conference in San Francisco.  What’s particularly interesting about HealthBeat is that it spotlights how health care is being transformed by visionaries who don’t necessarily have M.D. behind their names. (more…)

Happy National Women’s Health Week to all our fabulous Disruptive Women readers! Lots of groups released information and toolkits in celebration. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet here are just a few: NWLC toolkit, interactive screening chart and infographic done by HHS.

In other news, the Washington Post reported on the possibility that cancer patients and others taking pricey drugs might pay even more for their medications under ACA.

An interesting study of Medicaid recipients in Oregon found that increased health care spending had a limited impact on improving people’s health. Learn more here. (more…)

A recent article published in partnership with The Investigative Fund and Newsweek questioned the existence of “female dysfunction,” as if to say, who cares about women’s sexual health? If you can’t “see” it, apparently it doesn’t exist. This is one-sided, inaccurate and disparaging of women.

Why is it that when men are impotent it is taken seriously, but when women suffer from sexual dysfunction it is ridiculed and attributed to “Big Pharma’s” attempt to conjure a condition so they can make and sell a drug?  If Pharma is so bad, why do we depend upon them to research and manufacture drugs to prevent and treat cancer? (more…)