This post was written by Kelley Connors, President, Founder, Real Women on Health!

Patient advocacy has a new meaning for me – for years I was only looking at one piece of the advocacy puzzle. Today, I see the whole picture from the patient as well as organizational standpoint.  One’s view certainly intensifies as your passion rises when your own family member or friend needs help navigating the healthcare system to receive the right care.

For years, I’ve been behind the scenes of educational campaigns that patients benefited from with pharmaceutical industry support; think Go Red for heart disease awareness among women, and Susan G Komen’s grassroots efforts to increase public awareness about the importance of self-breast exams and mammograms.  With women’s lifetime risk of breast cancer being one in eight and heart disease the leading cause of death among women, I’ve been hired as a PR specialist to develop advocacy campaigns for companies to help women gain the knowledge they need to effectively prevent and treat a myriad of women’s health conditions.

But, things change when it’s your dad who has chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).  And, you start to dig in to find out as much as you can about the condition, how to pay for a drug that costs $8,000 a month, and how to coordinate care when oncologists – as valued as they are – may miss concomitant conditions that impact how a patient feels and responds to CML treatment.

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The following is a guest post by Irene Natividad. Ms. Natividad is President of the Global Summit of Women, an international economic forum for women. She also runs her own public affairs firm, Globe Women, based in Washington, D.C.  Ms. Natividad is a frequent commentator on PBS’ ‘To The Contrary’, CNN, Good Morning America, Fox News, MSNBC, and other television news outlets. She has written editorials for USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune.

Imagine if businesses – and business leaders – could help beat cancer. It may seem an unlikely match, but I believe they can.

My organization, Global Summit of Women, and I have taken on the challenge of cervical cancer based on one key fact: cervical cancer is almost entirely preventable. And yet it continues to strike at least 500,000 women each year, killing more than 270,000.

To me, as president of the largest economic forum for women, these figures are outrageous. Women are at the heart of our global economy. Whether they are tilling a field in Uganda, running a Laundromat in Paris, or leading a Fortune 500 company in California, our economies are only as strong and healthy as they are. Global economic growth, especially in developing countries, depends on empowering women to control their own economic futures. Without health, this is impossible.

This is why thousands of leaders from corporate, government, and non-profit sectors are joining me this month at the 2010 Global Summit of Women in Beijing, and lending support to our Global Consortium of Women to End Cervical Cancer, the closing event of our three-day gathering. Year after year we make it our mission to ensure that women leaders spread the word about cervical cancer prevention, focusing on efforts to increase access to the screening and vaccines necessary to make cervical cancer the first cancer the world gets rid of for good.

The alternative is dire: If we fail to take real steps toward preventing cervical cancer, the number of worldwide diagnoses could reach 700,000 annually by 2020. Most of these will be in developing countries, where 80 percent of cases occur. Cervical cancer tends to strike women in their prime, and because so many cases in developing countries go undetected until they’re too severe to treat, the toll cervical cancer takes on economies is astonishing.

These figures are particularly egregious because cervical cancer prevention does not depend on future technological discoveries; we already have everything we need to do the job. The cause of cervical cancer is known: human papillomavirus (HPV). Screening for HPV can help identify women who are already at high risk for cancer, allowing them to be treated early as necessary. Vaccinating girls against HPV can help prevent cervical disease as today’s young generation become women. Together, these tools form a powerful defense arsenal.

Even more promising for developing countries, researchers are creating a new HPV test that doesn’t require running water, electricity, or highly trained laboratory professionals. It would allow women to be screened and, if necessary, begin treatment on the same day. Technologies that can help broaden access to women in low-resource, rural areas promise to bring about a turning point in the areas hit hardest by cervical cancer.

So if we agree that wiping out cervical cancer makes sense, and technology isn’t the problem, then what’s stopping us? The global community needs to prioritize the cause, and global business leaders, particularly women, can be the key to making this happen. We need to recognize that cervical cancer is not merely a health issue, but an economic issue that impacts development enormously. As such, governments and donors must commit the funding necessary to ensure that infrastructure for implementing screening and vaccination technologies is available and affordable. Organizations must encourage sustainable public health programs to reach all segments of a country’s population. All women must take action to protect themselves and their daughters.

Cervical cancer is one issue on which we can make unprecedented progress now and leave a legacy of a cervical cancer-free world. Over the past few years, groups such as the European Women’s Management Development Network, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women and the Inter-American Commission of Women have all been a part of the Summit’s Consortium of Women to End Cervical Cancer. This year, the All China Women’s Federation, the First Lady of Tanzania, and Sun Network co-owner Yang Lan are joining our call to action. We all have an extraordinary opportunity to make cervical cancer history, and we must not let it pass us by.

This blog entry was originally posted at The Huffington Post on May 17, 2010.

By Hygeia. Several Disruptive Women in Health Care are very involved in the high tech or biotech space.  We thought it was important to let you know about this exciting program—one that is taking place in our backyard.  We encourage as many of you ladies out there with an interest in health, science, innovation and business to attend—we need to spread the estrogen around – there are many women in and out of the I-270 corridor who are making enormous contributions to these fields. Don’t let the men do all the talking—join the conversation and join us on June 1st.

Click here to see the full announcement. If the image in your browser appears small, click to enlarge.

This post was written by Kelley Connors, President, Founder, Real Women on Health!

Life has a way of taking its twists and turns and ups and downs…and soon enough we’re over 40 and wondering when, if ever, we’ll “hit our stride”.

Self-acceptance and self-esteem are closely related…and arises as you learn that you are perfect with all your accomplishments, victories, and … vices. Self-acceptance is as essential to one’s well-being as water is to a blooming flower. Have you ever re-framed your “inadequacies” and lack of self-acceptance into a humor and candor….where laughter has a place in healing and well-being?

Move over Candace Bushnell… and meet Amy Cohen, a New York Times Best-selling author of “The Late Bloomer Revolution”. Amy says it well here, “I like to think of myself as a late bloomer, one who will, however, late come into bloom.   Although when, and if, I bloom remain a mystery. I wish I knew how to speak a foreign language fluently.  I wish I knew how to cook a simple roast chicken, or that I had read the Idiot whose main character sounds like someone I can relate to.

By 35, Amy learned to ride the bike of her life. Click here to take the Late Bloomer’s Quiz and join “The Late Bloomer’s Revolution”.

Speaking of living life on our terms…learn what’s going on “inside the beltway” and take control of your healthcare with our radio show’s Washington, DC correspondent, Robin Strongin. A true woman’s advocate with the connections to make it happen, she reveals the knowledge that will empower us women to become our own best health and wellness advocates.

Robin is the founder of Disruptive Women in Healthcare, a thriving blogging community of high powered women who are driving innovation in healthcare with thought-provoking ideas and commentary on the nation’s challenges. This week, she’s disrupting the status quo with a grasp on why you can’t take clinical trial information at face value…what you need to ask your doctor to stay in control of your health and well-being.

Join Kelley, Cassie, Robin and Amy on Real Women on Health! live talk radio this Wednesday, May 5th at 8 pm – 9 pm EST on your computer at www.wstcwnlk.com streaming live or, if you live near Fairfield County, Connecticut  listen “on the AM dial” at 1350/1400.

This blog entry was originally posted in Real Women on Health! on May 3, 2010.

Thomas Maeder, our May 2010 Man of the Month, is the author or co-author of twelve books and numerous articles in national publications, and has long experience in the biomedical field as a writer, educator, and consultant. Below, he shares his thoughts on rare disorders and their place in the drug market.

Orphan Diseases – Bellwether of Health Care

“The only people interested in rare diseases are those who have them, and that’s not a lot,” an editor once told me when rejecting my proposal for a book on orphan diseases.

In reality, nearly thirty million Americans – one in ten – suffer from some 7,000 rare diseases, making them collectively very common indeed.  Though they differ wildly in their causes and manifestations, they share many characteristics in terms of the uncertainty, isolation, and costs imposed upon sufferers and their families, the challenges they pose for our health care system and sense of social responsibility, and their potential value to medical research.

In the United States, orphan diseases were defined by the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 as those that affect fewer than 200,000 people domestically.  This landmark legislation offered incentives – tax credits, a period of market exclusivity independent of patent protection, research grants – for manufacturers to develop clinically valuable treatments that would not be economically viable in the normal pharmaceutical market.  Previously there had been tragic instances of known, potentially useful therapeutics never taken to market, or others of already proven effectiveness that were withdrawn, because they did not meet a drug company’s threshold of profitability.  The definition encompasses some familiar disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, Huntingdon’s Disease, and Crohn’s disease, along with thousands of much rarer conditions, including fibrodysplasia ossificans progressive (FOP), Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, and Sakati Syndrome, or acrocephalopolysyndactyly type III, which for many years was represented by a single patient in Saudi Arabia.

In less than thirty years since passage of the Act, more than 300 orphan drugs have been approved for market.  Some are produced by large pharmaceutical companies.  The biotechnology industry also benefited tremendously from the orphan drug market and its incentives.  In addition, as one pharmaceutical executive told me, big drug companies may need billion dollar drugs to support not only R&D but also massive corporate infrastructures and the sales and marketing machinery, but a small company aiming at a well-defined population, with a small number of specialized physicians and facilities, patient advocacy organizations, and unusually motivated patients, can get by quite nicely on mere tens of millions of dollars in revenues.

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This post was written by Kelley Connors, President, Founder, Real Women on Health!

We’re a culture that mixes sexy and boobs.  So, can a woman feel sexy without breasts?

For breast cancer, and other, survivors, the question sounds just as practical as  provoking.  Breast cancer is the most common kind of cancer affecting women, except non-melanoma skin cancer. It’s commonness increases with age and with more targeted treatments available today, women are living longer with cancer.

But the effects of treatment remain.  In some cases, women choose to have their breast removed as prevention… while others have no choice and must have surgery and chemotherapy. Regardless of the path a woman chooses,  cancer wreaks havoc on her “sensual self.” From the toxic effects of chemotherapy on hair and skin to the disfigurement of breast removal, how do women regain a sense of sensuality?

And, what about sex?  Does sex have a place in living with cancer? Sensuality and sexuality and what happens after cancer are vital questions for women coping with cancer today.

Because the loss of sexual desire after cancer has more than one reason behind it, restoring libido or “desire” often requires more than one solution. It’s not at all just about boobs for many women.  And, sometimes the desire for sex remains strong, however, the physiological effects of cancer treatment itself interferes with performance or pleasure.

The topic is one plagued by the medicalization of women’s health, the lack of communication between the healthcare professional and patient, societal taboos around sex and women’s bodies, poor communication between intimate partners and lack of understanding of the impact of cancer treatment. In fact, in the beginning, women may feel guilty that they are thinking about anything other than “surviving” so the question of  “What’s going to happen to my sex life” is left outside of any medical setting. (more…)

To learn more about the disease and get information about the JDRF Capitol Chapter’s 2010 Walk to Cure Diabetes, visit www.jdrfcapitol.org. The Walks will be held in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, May 2 and in Leesburg, Virginia on Sunday, June 6.

By Tamera Adams. “Can I do anything?” is the response 12-year-old Sara Jacob typically hears when she explains to new friends that she has diabetes and the device strapped to her waist is not a cell phone, but her “life support.” Those are the exact words Sara uses to describe the pump that automatically infuses insulin into her small body. It’s more critical than chemotherapy is to a cancer patient she explains.

Unlike a type 2 diabetic whose body doesn’t produce sufficient insulin, Sara’s body produces no insulin at all. She has type 1 diabetes, which is commonly referred to as juvenile diabetes and generally diagnosed in children, teens or young adults. It’s the most severe form of the disease, lasts a lifetime and its cause remains unknown. Most importantly, the complications that result from type 1 diabetes can be devastating.

Diagnosed at the age of four, Sara has no difficulty explaining what the disease is or how it has affected her life—neither does 12-year-old Jeremy Gross, also diagnosed at age four. Jeremy’s nine-year-old brother Benjamin, on the other hand, was diagnosed just two years ago and seems a little less vocal about his experience.

The stories they shared are common among children with diabetes—the difficulty of going on sleepovers at friends’ houses; teachers that make it difficult for them to leave the classroom to test blood sugar levels or take glucose tablets; and being instructed by gym teachers and coaches to remove medic alert jewelry to participate in sporting activities. Jeremy was especially grateful that he doesn’t have to contend with the latter of these challenges. Fortunately, his gym teacher is very understanding.

However, Benjamin once heard a teacher tell his class that exercise would prevent diabetes—a blanket statement about the disease that doesn’t apply to type 1 diabetics and made Benjamin slightly uncomfortable.

Although their parents are very involved and intervene without hesitation, diabetes is a difficult disease to manage, especially for a child.

That’s why the Gross family turned to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) after Jeremy was diagnosed. JDRF immediately sent a Bag of Hope—which includes a glucose meter, books, DVDs and a myriad of materials to educate and lend support to diabetic children and their caregivers. (more…)

The following is a guest post by Archelle Georgiou, MD. Archelle is a 40-something year old doctor and the health expert on Fox9 News in the Twin Cities. She has spent 25 years in health care… in private practice, in corporate America, and now has her own consulting practice, Georgiou Consulting, so that she can pursue health care projects, initiatives, and causes she believes are most meaningful to making a difference for people. Archelle blogs at Archelle on Health.

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We all enjoy the heart-warming stories of siblings who are separated at birth and miraculously re-connected with each other as adults. We empathize with the need for adopted individuals to search for their biological parents. Why? Because we have an innate need to know who we are, where we came from, and who we are connected to. For the majority of us, our identity is not a gnawing issue. We are surrounded by our parents, siblings and extended families. We are comfortable, sometimes too comfortable, with the personal, cultural and religious labels that our parents bestow on us, and we live our lives believing that we know who we are.

But do we?

As the daughter of Greek immigrants, I always considered myself a thoroughbred. I never questioned my own cultural background, but as far back as I can remember, I was curious about Jews and Judaism. The reality was that I knew nothing about the culture or the religion except that Pikesville, the Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore, was the only area that had a bagel store. I was 24 the first time I entered a synagogue. I felt at home, but it wasn’t about the religious aspects of the service–it was all in Hebrew and I didn’t understand a word. I simply felt a connection to the environment. In 1988, I converted. While the timing centered around our wedding, the decision to take this step seemed completely natural.

It wasn’t until I had personal genetic testing that the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Mitochondrial DNA from my cheek swab and a saliva sample (I had 2 confirmatory tests because I am compulsive) showed I am in Haplogroup K – a group once found at high frequency in the Basques of northern Spain between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. My specific haplogroup subtype is K1a5: Seventy percent of the people with my mitochondrial DNA are Ashkenazic Jews. Relatives who have done some additional genealogy research discovered that my maternal grandmother’s family, named “Leventis,” were previously named “Levin.” Six hundred years ago, the family was most likely from Spain but migrated to Greece during after the Inquisition in 1492. They assimilated….became Hellenicized…and the rest is accurately captured in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

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Disruptive Women’s Wendy Grossman interviewed Lindsay Avner, founder of Bright Pink. Lindsay Avner’s name might sound familiar to you — the 27-year-old made national news four years ago when she was one of the youngest women to have an elective double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer.

So many women responded to Lindsay’s story, that three years ago she started Bright Pink, a new, fun, breast cancer education, awareness and support group that has grown to 10 chapters nationwide.

Instead of hosting sad support group meetings in dank church basements, bright pink girls take yoga classes or belly dance together. Bright pink sends out monthly text messages reminding women to feel themselves up. Next month, they’re hostessing a burlesque show demonstrating self-exams.

“For so long people have been talking about this in the same kind of mundane way and it’s not making a difference. You have to come in there and shake things up a little bit — and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Lindsay says.

Q: You had a double mastectomy when you were 23?
A: I did.

Q: Why?
A: I have a very strong history of both breast and ovarian cancer. My mom’s mother and grandmother died six days apart, both from breast cancer — they were 39 and 58. And my mom was only 18 when it happened.

In addition, there were 11 other relatives — aunts, and cousins on my mom’s side of the family that have passed away from these diseases.

I remember being a little girl and my mom saying one day I might have to deal with this. It was always present. It was never something that got brushed off and we said, ‘Oh, we’ll just deal with it tomorrow.” My mom was very adamant. She went to the doctor consistently every six months. When they said, ‘Come back in a year.’ She said, ‘I’ll see you in six months.’
Because of that, she really detected her own breast cancer. She had a completely clean mammogram. But she noticed a swelling on the side of her right breast. And she said, ‘I’m not leaving until I find out what this is.’ The doctor said, ‘You’re crazy. We just did a mammogram, you’re absolutely fine.’ She said, ‘You need to check it out.’

Sure enough, they went in and did a biopsy and they hit something and it was Stage 1 breast cancer.
And 10 months later she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Q: Oh no!
A: She went through a lot at 41. I was 12 at the time. I grew up very fast. I switched from being a middle-schooler to Miss Mom helping care for my little brother. It was just really, really draining and hard and not an easy kind of thing. You know what I mean?

I graduated from Michigan in 2005 and decided to undergo genetic testing.

I went into it thinking, ‘Maybe I don’t need to be so focused on my breast cancer risk. On my fathers’ side of the family there’s no cancer.’ It was a 50-50 chance.

Unfortunately, I tested positive for the breast cancer gene — BRAC-1 in July 2005.

I made the decision in August 2006 — I was one of the youngest patients nationwide ever to have the preventative surgery. Do I want to do surveillance? Do I want to do surgery? What’s this going to mean? I’m single now.

It was very, very hard. I felt very alone through all of it. I wasn’t a cancer survivor, but yet I wasn’t like everybody else.

Before the surgery, I longed to speak to somebody who was young, and “normal”, and fun and had gone through it and came out on the other side and happy and okay, and actually did love her body and felt okay, and met Mr. Right.

I felt very alone. So I said, ‘I need to make this different for so many other people.’ I originally told my story about my surgery to the Chicago Tribune and the next day I was on the Today show.
It’s a shocking story. Here’s a woman whose healthy, who makes a decision when she’s young to remove her healthy breast tissue. More than 1,000 young women in their 20s and 30s reached out to the writers and producers. Time and time again, the story wasn’t necessarily I had genetic testing, it was, ‘My mom had breast cancer or my grandma had ovarian cancer.’

That’s really where the idea for Bright Pink came from. To know this information, is an opportunity generations of women never had. To be able to identify your risk, develop a strategy to be proactive, and live the rest of your life and be happy and live cancer free.

Q: What are you doing new with Bright Pink right now?
A: One of our favorite new initiatives is the underwire alert.

Q: So it’s a text message reminding you to do a breast exam?
A: It is. All they have to do is text the work PINK to the short code 59227 and they’re automatically enrolled to send them a fun, and cheeky message to just be aware of their breasts. To touch them, and look at them, and feel them and speak up if something changes. We’re trying to get thousands and thousands of women. This is one great, easy activity that all women can do.

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President Obama’s 2011 HHS budget builds on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AARA) investment in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), providing an additional $290 million for further expansions.  With this increase, the administration estimates that health centers will be able to serve more than 20 million individuals in FY 2011.

Combined with other AARA provisions, this is good news for some of our nation’s “safety net” providers, including FQHCs, as well as public and nonprofit hospitals that treat many low income patients.  But there’s also a growing hole in the safety net as free medical clinics struggle to survive the current economic recession.

In a recently released research brief on safety net providers by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Center for Studying Health System Change^[1], the authors note, “while many FQHCs have benefitted from both the recent ARRA funding and federal expansion grants over the past 10 years, many free clinics without FQHC status were facing more serious financial strains than safety net hospitals and FQHCs.”  The report goes on to quote one FQHC executive as saying, “FQHCs got money, and free clinics are worried about keeping their doors open…There’s a big have and have-nots disparity.”

FQHCs include community health centers, public housing centers and some outpatient programs.  These providers receive federal payments for qualified services and are eligible for stimulus funds and federal expansion grants.  In contrast, free clinics do not receive federal payments and they are not eligible for funding available to FQHCs.  Instead, they depend primarily on private philanthropy and a team of volunteer physicians to provide care to the uninsured.

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The following guest post by Dr. Peggy Polaneczky, a New York-based physician, was recently featured on the Better Health blog.The original post can be found on Dr. Polaneczky’s The Blog that Ate Manhattan: Food, Considerations & Second Opinions blog.

First off, I need to address those who think they’re being brilliantly funny comparing Apple’s new product name to a feminine hygiene product – making comments like “Does it come with wings?” and “It’s light and easy to use, but can you swim with it?” (these are the cleaner comments I’ve seen), or calling for the next generation ITampon.

Since when did the word “Pad” become unusable in public discourse? And where were these folks when IBM came out with their Think Pad? It’s stupid, 12-year old funny and just plain dumb. Grow up, ladies and gents.

Now, on to more serious matters.

Is the IPad, as some are suggesting, the next big thing in Medicine? Dana Blakenhorn at ZDNet thinks so, calling medicine the IPad’s “Sweet Spot”-

It’s what your doctor has been dreaming of ever ince the PC revolution began. Imagine this in a flip-up case, in every examination room at your clinic. The nurse sets up the chart, the doctor walks in with a stylus and examines you, and when he’s done the chart goes into the file and the prescription is waiting at the desk for you, printed clearly, along with your Coordination of Care Record. Hand the nurse your credit card and you’re off.

The following guest post by Debra Gordon, an award-winning freelance medical writer, was recently featured on the Better Health blog. The original post can be found on Debra Gordon’s Musings on Medicine and Health Care blog.

Back in the day when I was a newspaper reporter I completed a biomedical ethics fellowship at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, VA. In addition to sitting in on the hospital’s bioethics committee discussions, I spent much of the week shadowing a nurse in the ICU.

They called her the Death Nurse because her job was to intervene with doctors, nurses, patients and families when the time came for a patient to move from the ICU to hospice. While her title was Supportive Care, she flat out told her me her job was to help people die; not actively, but from behind the scenes by helping patients and those caring for them understand when the time had come to move from curative care to supportive care (email me if you’d like a copy of the article I wrote about her).

When I asked why her job was necessary, she told me it was because it was so hard for doctors, nurses, patients and even families to face the reality of death. Her thoughts were echoed by a doctor there who was completing a critical care fellowship: “A lot of us don’t know what to say because we’re so uncomfortable with death,” he told me. “When someone who is not part of the team says this is ridiculous, it’s time to stop, we listen.”

I bring this up because I completed that fellowship 13 years ago. One would hope that things had changed since then, that more openness and discussions about end-of-life care would have moved us towards a recognition that sometimes death is not a failure, but a success. Unfortunately, however, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Last week, a study published in the online edition of the journal Cancer on the results of a national survey of physicians caring for cancer patients found that most doctors aid they would “not discuss end-of-life options with terminally ill patients who are feeling well, and instead would wait for symptoms or until there are no more treatments to offer.”

Why? Why not talk to your patients about how they want to die, just as you talk to them about how they want to live, how they want to address their disease? Why not talk to them about how you will manage their pain and keep them comfortable as death approaches? How you hope this will give them and their families time to  reach closure in their personal and financial relationships. Give them time to come to terms with this next stage of their life.

These are not easy discussions to have. They take time and, for many doctors, additional training. Earlier versions of the healthcare reform bills now pending would have provided reimbursement under Medicare for doctors who had such discussions with their patients; but, of course, cries of “death panels” doomed that component.

So, I ask you, what is the answer? How do we learn to talk about death with one another, to stop fearing it, to understand that there is no way of avoiding it, and to accept that a death we have some control over will generally be a much better death than one that sneaks up on us?

Let me hear your comments.

The following guest post on the subject of cervical cancer screening guidelines is written by Susan Wysocki, WHNP-BC, FAANP, president and CEO of the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health and Susan Scanlan, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations. The article below initially appeared on America Media Forum’s website.

It’s not surprising that women are confused about the recently changed recommendations for cancer screening and prevention. New guidelines from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) – the leading medical group that provides health care for women – say women should wait longer to begin cervical-cancer screening and that they should be screened less frequently. On the heels of similar changes to breast-cancer screening guidelines, it’s understandable that many women might see this as a step backward.

On the contrary, the new cervical-cancer screening recommendations reflect advances in our understanding of this disease and in tools now available to prevent it. More importantly, they present an opportunity to educate women about the significant opportunity we have to further prevent – if not eliminate – cervical cancer.

New ACOG screening guidelines recommend women should begin getting Pap tests at age 21 (as opposed to within three years of becoming sexually active) and that, from ages 21 to 29, most women should have Pap tests every two years instead of annually. Additionally, screening for women 30 and older with a history of normal Pap test results now moves to every three years.

To understand the rationale for these changes, it’s important to first know how the disease develops. Cervical cancer is caused by “high-risk” types of the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted infection. Most women will have HPV at some point in their lives, but their immune systems will typically clear the virus without symptoms or treatment. HPV infections that persist over time – typically many years – can cause cell changes that can potentially lead to cervical cancer. Because cervical cancer is slow-growing, it generally allows ample time for screening to detect problems that can be treated before the cancer can develop. The majority who die of cervical cancer in the U.S. have either never been screened or have not been screened in many years.

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The following guest post by Rachel Hampton, Research Associate at the Global Health Council, is part of Disruptive Women’s “The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” series.

Rachel’s areas of focus include maternal, newborn and child health and reproductive health. She has authored research briefs on private sector involvement in health systems, commercial sexual exploitation, the integration of maternal, newborn and child health and family planning, in addition to a variety of other publications from the GHC.

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Women’s economic autonomy and employment opportunities are crucial to their health, particularly their reproductive health. Each year, 536,000 women die, nearly 10 million are disabled, and 250 million years of reproductive life are lost because of poor reproductive health. Enabling women’s economic sovereignty has the potential to allow women to take control of their fertility – they would have the resources to access family planning services, effectively space wanted pregnancies and limit unsafe abortions – all of which are leading factors to poor maternal health.

Limited economic security, limited access to education and poor employment opportunities contribute to lack of access to health services, education and employment, and lead to high fertility rates and increased maternal mortality and morbidity. In many countries, women are not allowed to own property and are limited in their economic opportunities, restricting their economic security and limiting access to reproductive health services. Lack of finances is particularly problematic for women who are heads of households or married women who have little say in family finances.

Limited financial autonomy for women also has a profound impact on their children, resulting in generations of young people who have limited opportunities for education and employment. Young girls are particularly vulnerable, as they often miss out on educational or employment opportunities because they have to provide care for sick relatives or have children at a young age. Economic empowerment could break this circle of poverty and ensure economic security and improved health for generations to come.
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The following guest post by Peg Willingham, Senior Director for External Affairs for Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, is part of Disruptive Women’s “The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” series.

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Shortly, I will be heading to Cancun, Mexico, for the 40^th Union World Conference on Tuberculosis and Lung Health.  The meeting will bring together hundreds of dedicated researchers, project implementers, World Health Organization officials and advocates who have committed themselves to stopping tuberculosis, which is second only to HIV/AIDS as the most infectious disease killer globally.  Yet decades after the first meeting of this august body, we are still using the same outdated, inefficient and marginally effective tools to fight TB.  Meanwhile, the wily tuberculosis bacterium – which has been killing people for tends of thousands of years – continues to get ahead of us with its growing resistance to available treatment.  Vaccines remain the most medically efficient and cost-effective ways to prevent and eliminate disease.   To stop TB, we must do all we can to mobilize the scientists, researchers, public health decision-makers and funders to make new TB vaccines a reality.

The development of new TB vaccines is a vast and expensive undertaking requiring an all-hands-on-deck approach.  Private foundations and a select group of European governments are supporting this work, but the US government lags woefully behind.  The US established itself as a world leader in HIV/AIDS through President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.  The U.S. also is a dominant force behind ramped up HIV and malaria vaccine research.  Yet, the US has failed to take up TB vaccine research as a priority funding area.  Because of PEPFAR, many are now living full lives with HIV, only to be struck down by TB.   Why this lack of action on TB?

The pandemic is ever-more dangerous as it evolves globally and thousands of Americans become ill with TB each year.  TB is a disease of poverty and it kills nearly as many women as all causes of maternal mortality.  Active TB disease hampers a mother’s ability to care for her family and robs many children of their mothers.  Children, especially those living in the crowded conditions of poverty, are also at greater risk of becoming infected with TB when a parent or family member has TB.

The good news is that there is tremendous momentum in TB vaccine research, with seven TB vaccine candidates currently undergoing clinical testing.  My organization, Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, and a handful of others are doing all we can with available resources to accelerate the process to get new, safe and effective vaccines to those who need them so urgently.  Although Aeras is a non-profit research organization, developing new vaccines is still a complex and expensive undertaking.  One large-scale clinical trial designed for potential licensure of a vaccine will cost approximately $160 million.  Yet this represents a smart investment, because a TB vaccine would be save millions of dollars – and lives.  As the Obama administration and Congress outlines their foreign assistance agendas, TB vaccine research should be prioritized. Investment in preventing TB today will translate into fewer resources in treatment and lost productivity – and lives – in the future.