The following is a post by Dr. Jessie Gruman from the Center for Advancing Health. This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog.

“There is a better way – structural reforms that empower patients with greater choices and increase the role of competition in the health-care marketplace.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)August 3, 2011

The highly charged political debates about reforming American health care have provided tempting opportunities to rename the people who receive health services.  But because the impetus for this change has been prompted by cost and quality concerns of health care payers, researchers and policy experts rather than emanating from us out of our own needs, some odd words have been called into service.  Two phrases commonly used to describe us convey meanings that mischaracterize our experiences and undervalue our needs: “empowered patient” and “health care consumer.”

As one who has done serious time as a patient and who spends serious time listening to talks and reading the literature that use these words to describe us, I ask you to reconsider their use.

“Empowered patient” The fabrication of the verb “to empower” from the noun “power” was used in the civil rights and community development movements to describe a benevolent bestowal of influence on disenfranchised individuals and groups by those who had previously excluded them.  When used in relation to health care, the word perpetuates the idea that we are passive entities, waiting to be gratefully endowed by our clinician or a new policy with the right and ability to act on our own behalf.  Our “empowerment” takes place not as a result of our own will or preference, but rather because we have been given permission to act in a different way by some external agent. (more…)

The following is a guest post from blogger and writer Amanda Kidd. She is a regular follower of healthy living her health guide includes all the health related topics. Amongst all she likes to write on sexual health a lot:

Sexual urge or the libido is a natural phenomenon in men and women alike. It is widely believed and understood that couples enjoy intimacy more in their young age rather than in matured stage of their lives. Though apparently this may be a well accepted notion and may also look very true, the research indicates otherwise.

Sexual urge in older women, or middle aged women, is a subject of immense interest and research amongst the scientists and researchers all over the world. What happens to the sexual drive of a woman when she crosses the threshold of 30 and enters into the middle age era? Does she feel bored? Does her desire begin to wane? Or is it that sexual urge in women has no age bar? And at any point in time they remain equally active, if not more than the man?

An article published in a health magazine in UK suggests that middle aged women show more urge for indulging in sex than their younger counterparts. Elaborating further on the sexual drives and sexual health of older women, the article claims that these women are also more willing than younger women to have sexual escapade!

(more…)

The following was originally posted on Masters In Public Health on July 13th.

Wherever there are citizens who are passionate about improving the public health of their communities, the potential exists to build a powerful movement for change. Usually, these individuals are activists in social movements and in voluntary associations including civic organizations, women’s associations and labor organizations. But, their passions can move mountains, as you’ll learn from our list of 10 historic movements that improved worldwide public health.

1. Cancer: On May 22, 1913, the American Society for the Control of Cancer was created at a meeting of ten doctors and five laymen. At that time, a cancer diagnosis amounted to near certain death. Rarely mentioned in public, this taboo disease was steeped in fear and denial. In 1936, Marjorie G. Illig, an ASCC field representative and chair of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Committee on Public Health, made an extraordinary suggestion. She proposed creating a legion of volunteers whose sole purpose was to wage war on cancer. The Women’s Field Army, as this organization came to be called, was an enormous success. Today, the American Cancer Society continues the fight against cancer, and many groups — including the Susan G. Komen Foundation — join the fight.

2. Health Insurance: The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not have national health insurance. As early as 1915, the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) proposed a national insurance system that would cover medical care, sick pay, maternity benefits, and funeral expenses for low-paid workers and their dependents. To this day, despite four other battles for national health insurance, about 16 percent of the population is uninsured. However, the Affordable Care Act recently brought an end to some of the worst abuses of the insurance industry, bringing new rights and benefits to Americans.

3. Hull House: Jane Addams, in 1889, worked with Chicago’s neediest families and helped them to become full participants in their communities. Today, the Jane Addams Hull House Association continues to provide services for child welfare and foster care, domestic violence victims, education and literacy, homelessness, eldercare and youth. They even provide workforce development and small business development. (more…)

The following is a guest post by Margaret Anderson, executive director of FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, an “action tank” working to improve the medical research system and speed up the time it takes to get important new medicines from discovery to patients. Margaret also serves as vice president of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, board member for the Council for American Medical Innovation and the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, and member of the Prostate Cancer Foundation Government Affairs Committee and the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Drug Discovery, Development and Translation. In 2011, the Clinical Research Forum recognized her with an award for leadership in public advocacy.

By Margaret Anderson. What’s missing today in the medical research system is a sense of urgency and a willingness to take risks. When it comes to developing new therapies for deadly and debilitating diseases, it takes too long, costs too much, and patients are left wondering – where are the cures? Last year only 21 new molecular entities were approved by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the fewest approved since 2007.  Can we honestly say that this is the kind of return we should be getting on our multi-billion dollar investment in scientific discovery?

Pharma and biotech companies, along with the federal government, provide the majority of funding for biomedical research in the U.S., however there is another group of nonprofit disease research foundations known as “venture philanthropies” that are bringing a sense of urgency to the medical research community and having an outsized effect on R&D.

Although they comprise only a small share of overall R&D spending in the United States (roughly three percent) these nimble, outcomes-focused organizations are making the high-risk investments that are moving promising science forward and, in doing so, increasing the likelihood that other parties will also invest.  In particular, venture philanthropy resources are helping to bridge valley of death – the gap between a promising discovery in the lab and the point at which a company is willing to pick it up and move its development forward.  This has traditionally been where many good ideas in the drug development pipeline drop off due to funding and knowledge gaps, and the influx of venture philanthropy support has been invaluable in ensuring forward progress. (more…)

The following is a guest post by Kathy N. Johnson, PhD, CMC. Dr Johnson is a Certified Geriatric Care Manager, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Home Care Assistance. She holds a Doctorate in Psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology.  Kathy co-authored the book, Happy to 102: The Best Kept Secrets to a Long and Happy Life, based on the ground breaking Okinawa Centenarian Study, which spells out precisely what it takes to delay or escape Alzheimer’s and other chronic diseases, as well as how to slow the aging process.

By Dr. Kathy Johnson. Family members who provide care for a chronically ill, disabled, or aging parent make up almost 30% of the U.S. population. The majority are women, ages 40-65, and they spend an average of 20 hours per week in hands-on care giving. Family caregivers are often adult daughters who are also caring for children and juggling job responsibilities, household chores, and the needs of a spouse.

If you are in this “sandwich generation,” the pressure to do it all makes you particularly vulnerable to stress. Research has shown that nearly 75% of caregivers report not going to the doctor as often as they should; 63% have poor eating habits; and 58% indicate that their exercise habits are disrupted by care-giving responsibilities. 

Being a family caregiver is never easy. However, many women feel so overworked and unappreciated that they are unsure about their ability to continue being a caregiver. The daily emotional and physical demands of the care-giving process often lead to feelings of burnout.

The Signs of Burnout

Psychologists define burnout as “a debilitating psychological condition brought about by unrelieved stress.” Burnout isn’t as obvious as getting a sore throat or the flu, and family caregivers often deny or are oblivious to the signs of burnout. Sometimes burnout is noticed first by other family members and friends around you. Pay attention to these warning signs:

• Feeling pessimistic and dissatisfied
• Decreased energy or emotional exhaustion
• Withdrawing from friends or social interactions
• Loss of interest in work or enjoyable activities
• Increased use of alcohol or medication to relax
• Becoming impatient, irritable, or argumentative
• Lowered resistance to illness (more…)

The following is  a guest post by Margaret Polaneczky, MD, FACOG  a board certified obstetrician-gynecologist and Associate Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. It was originally posted on her blog The Blog That Ate Manhattan.

In an article filled with speculation, misinformation and broad sweeping generalizations, the Wall Street Journal does its damned best to make the birth control pill seem to be the worst thing to have happened to modern civilization, implying that by interfering with ovulation, the pill impairs our natural ability to choose a mate, causes women to choose less masculine partners and then stray from them, and makes us pick genetically similar rather than dissimilar mates.

Women on the pill no longer experience a greater desire for traditionally masculine men during ovulation…Researchers speculate that women with less-masculine partners may become less interested in their partner when they come off birth control, contributing to relationship dissatisfaction…That could prompt some women to stray, research suggests. Psychologist Steven Gangestad and his team at the University of New Mexico showed in a 2010 study that women with less-masculine partners reported an increased attraction for other men during their fertile phase.

“Less masculine” men. What the heck does that mean? Less hairy? Less into sports? Less violent? Not into Nascar or big trucks?

How about more likely to engage in conversation? More likely to care about their partner’s satisfaction in bed than their own? More likely to accept a woman having a career?

One could use the data to argue that the pill may be the best thing that ever happened to relationships as far as the female partner is concerned. (more…)

The following is a guest post by Jenni Sunde. Jenni is a freelance fashion writer and pop culture junkie. She specializes in all things lifestyle-related. From home and design to health and beauty. With her love of art and all things beautiful, she delights in sharing her sense of style from her life to your computer monitor. Her title pegs her as an editor at a website that specializes in providing people with car insurance quotes, but her passion leads her into writing with a little more substance and a lot more heart.

By Jenni Sunde. The benefits of a sound mind and body can be traced all the way back to ancient Greco-Roman cultures.  Despite how long the concepts behind mind and body connection have been around, they are frequently overlooked in our modern society.  The connection between mind and body is particularly impactful for adolescents; studies have shown that happier youths are indeed, healthier youths.

Emily Shaffer Hudkins and her team of researchers at the University of South Florida conducted a study that focused on the impact that positive emotions, moods and overall satisfaction with life has on the health of teens.  Her research shows that these positive feelings, also known as subjective well-being are more significant than depression and anxiety when it comes to physical health.  Psychopathology has long been where the emphasis is placed when it comes to determining how the mind and body are connected. 

Hudkins conducted an experiment with 401 students, grades 6-8 from a suburban southeastern middle school in the US.  She monitored both their subjective well-being and psychopathological tendencies.  The study asked questions about the teens’ satisfaction with life; whether they were strong, proud and excited, and whether they felt lonely, guilty, or sad.  What Hudkins founds is that good mental health most often is linked to good physical health.  Mental health indicators explain roughly 30 percent of the difference in physical health ratings.  The findings show that subjective well-being has a significant, unique and primary affect on predicting important physical health outcomes in youth.  In other words, subjective well-being is more strongly associated with physical functioning than psychopathology.

What Emily proposes is that we change our wellness models to ones that are more holistic, so as to incorporate the entire spectrum.  With current standards, the subjective well-being is often overlooked in terms of its impact on physical health when it actually is more prominent than poor mental health in terms of how much it can affect the body.

The following is a guest post by Sheila Rittenberg the Senior Director, Advocacy and External Affairs at the National Psoriasis Foundation. During her tenure with the National Psoriasis Foundation, Ms. Rittenberg has led the organization’s transition as a leader in health advocacy and public policy, emphasizing access to care issues and increasing investments in psoriasis research. She acted as Co-Chair of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Coalition and has assumed various advisory roles including that of committee member to the Office Oregon Health Policy & Research Drug Effectiveness Review Project and member of the National Health Council, Grassroots Technical Assistance Task Force. She is an author and contributing author on advocacy and clinical consensus publications and has been a public speaker on behalf of the psoriasis community.

Shelia Rittenberg

Overhauling health care… deepest budget cuts in history… A moral battle framed around health care reform…

These are only a smattering of the emotionally charged messages inundating ordinary citizens in America. How do people stay engaged and believe in the work of the country? How do they avoid being jaded about health care reform when politicians toss around accusations and critiques about policies and the people who propose them the way we might toss a ball around with our kids?

I have always believed in the power of bringing people together and connecting them in a meaningful way to those who are creating policies for the rest of us. It’s no different when it comes to health care policy. Here at the National Psoriasis Foundation, we practice “The Three A’s” – Action, Authority and Accountability. Keeping our constituents engaged in relevant issues and problem-solving achieves a spirit of action and purpose for everyone concerned. Leveraging that advocacy helps unify “grassroots” and establish credibility and authority as the voice of the community. Communicating these successes demonstrates that our organization is accountable for the public policy changes essential to our people.

The results of bringing “ordinary people” to talk to policymakers can be profound. There is a transformative power of this work we call advocacy. In our world of psoriasis, there are countless triumphs: the woman meeting with her legislator for the first time who told me she would never look at her psoriasis the same way again; the retiree who has re-invented himself at age 70 as a firebrand psoriasis political activist; the 16-year-old who changed career plans after testifying in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the pediatric psoriasis population. The point is, taking charge through Action, Authority and Accountability can change a person’s life — and society, at the same time. (more…)

This guest post was written by Nalini Saligram, PhD, founder and CEO of Arogya World. It originally ran on Arogya World’s blog on April 22nd.

On Earth Day, which was marked recently on April 22, 2011, we generally tend to focus on the impact of people on the planet. But it is equally important to consider the impact of pollution on people and health including non-communicable diseases  (NCDs). 

NCDs, which include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers and chronic lung disease, are gaining much-needed attention this year in advance of the upcoming pivotal UN High-level Meeting on NCDs on September 19-20.  NCDs – yes, the word is hard to pronounce and doesn’t quite roll off our tongues easily, but I am sure HIV/AIDS was quite a mouthful too in the early years – cause an alarming 2 out of 3 deaths in the world today, with a staggering 80% of them in developing countries.  Earth Day has given us another opportunity to draw the world’s attention to NCDs and what we can do about it.  This essay is my personal act of green – one of the billion the Earth Day organizers asked for this year.  

I don’t intend to talk about carcinogens and the rising rates of breast cancer nor about the impact of outdoor air pollution and vehicle exhausts on NCDs.  

Simply cooking every day – something all women do all over the world, sometimes over open fires as I saw first hand growing up in India, in villages, and even many towns and cities – this very basic everyday act can be extremely hazardous to women’s health.    

In many parts of the world, women spend 3-7 hours a day preparing food, often in front of an open fire.  Harsh economic realities force them to rely on cheaper fuels like firewood, coal and even dried cow dung.  Their babies are sometimes strapped to their backs or are nearby.   Young children in such cases spend many hours breathing indoor smoke during the first year of life.

The facts are frightening.  Three billion people – nearly half the world’s people – eat meals every day that are cooked over unclean stoves.   And 1.9 million – mostly women and children in developing countries – die each year because of that.  Globally, pneumonia is the single most significant cause of under-five childhood mortality.  Exposure to cooking smoke doubles a child’s risk for pneumonia, leading to more than 900,000 deaths in young children below five. (more…)

The following was originally posted on James’s Project by Mary Ellen Mannix, MRPE. The mission of James’s Project is to find, support, and help work that protects infants in their first year of life. James’s Project aims to reduce infant mortality by focusing on patient safety isssues that affect the start of life. Our tools are education, communication, and collaboration.

Rainy days and Saturdays get me down. (Sounds like a good song lyric.) Rainy days force a quiet among the constant buzz of activity. Saturdays are the closest thing to a once a week siesta. Nearly ten years ago, on a Saturday morning I had to to reflect on the beliefs I had held dear all my life as I was holding my newborn son who had just died. It took more than five years before I could wake up on a Saturday without feeling a desire to go back to sleep.

Today the rains came and brought with them memories of a Saturday past. Tears and frustration and disappointment rallied. Those feelings don’t make me feel very peaceful. Taking the analytical approach learned in grad school, I identified five causes for a peace builder in health care to have anger, frustration and the occasional tears.

Poor communication. This is a well-documented root cause for most every medical error. Earlier this week Kathleen Sebelius of the Dept of Health and Human Services and Don Berwick, MD of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare announced the creation of a $500 billion initiative to encourage more collaboration between hospitals, health care providers, community organizations, and employers, etc to improve care and lower costs. James’s Project was among the first ten organizations to make the public pledge for the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs in the greater Philadelphia area. Through this website consumer and clinical organizations can seek out others with similar values for collaboration. When a cancer patient called me this week sharing she had left the hospital without discharge instructions together we took a look at this website. The large teaching hospital had not yet pledged. By the end of the week, the institution had taken the pledge but the patient is still waiting for her discharge instructions. This is new resource where patients can grab the wheels and drive change by asking their hospital, health care system, insurer and or doctor if they have signed the pledge. Also ask – what community or patients group are you collaborating with?

Gag Clauses. As a rule, people love to hate the plaintiff in a medmal case. If you actually disagree with me, think of before you knew a loved one who died from medical errors. Americans love to love the whitecoats. Anyone associated with a trial lawyer automatically becomes a blackhat.
I believe in the judicial system our forefathers created. Everything breaks down at times. As a teacher, I hope that learning happens from mistakes. With James’s case, it was clear the physicians had as much of a right to a fair trial as my son did. It could have all been spared if open communication between us had been allowed. I was offered $750K to not go to trial and to not speak of my son’s whole life. All I wanted was to cover my attorney’s fees (about 45K at that point) and a 5 minute conversation with one of the defendants. It was not an acceptable counter offer evidently.
I can reflect now that I did get that conversation (and much more than 5 minutes) with two doctors (not just the one) and I did that all on my own.
Despite the tremendous pain of our shared trauma we have been able to heal by restoring a relationship. Our story and how we did it is how money in health care conflicts can be saved. More importantly, it teaches so many what not to do when they may find themselves in a similarly shared event. I have spent years and dollars investing in formal education to share this. (more…)

The following was originally posted on Real Women on Health on April 15th.

Join us in an upcoming on-line radio show on Wednesday, April 20th at 12:30 pm EST with Tina Krall, Executive Director of a Non-Profit called Fibroid Relief. We’re working with Disruptive Women in Health Care on this show and bringing you new information that may change the course of how women are treated for fibroids. Not all fibroids are the same, so you need to talk to your doctor, but Wendy Perkins, featured in this video, is an example of how new treatment options help women live into wellness.

Join our on-line radio show with Wendy and Tina Krall, Fibroid Relief and Dr. John Fisher, a radiologist who has performed thousands of minimally-invasive, image-guided procedures and hundreds of embolization procedures, many of them for uterine fibroids.

For more information on non-invasive treatment options for fibroids, check out Fibroid Relief. To learn more about hysterectomies, you should look at this Women’s Health web site.

 The following is a guest post by Nalini Saligram, Founder and CEO, Arogya World.

The key priority of the UN Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) is to ensure it lives up to its promise of being a genuinely transformative moment in world health.

The good news is that momentum is building. Until just a few months ago, the very word NCDs was unknown. Now thanks to the UN Summit, the foundational work of the WHO and of the NCD Alliance and the Global Health Council, NGOs, academic centers, individuals in key corporations, and civil society, an NCD community is beginning to gel. We are debating the definition of NCDs, issuing Declarations articulating the “asks” from the UN Summit, attending conferences and meetings to discuss how we can address NCDs the world over, and encouragingly, we are mostly agreeing with one another. The Summit has already energized the entire NCD community.

So what must happen for the Summit to be considered transformative? It should serve as a pivotal point to rally the whole world, touching not just the UN, policy elites, and the NCD community, but families everywhere. It must make NCDs resonate with the man on the street, so that everyone the world over is clear on the issues, what their governments and communities are doing to address them and what they themselves can do to prevent them.

The Summit should ignite action. It should lead everyone to ask themselves the question – How can I use my platform and my sphere of influence to help reduce the crippling public health impact of NCDs? It should lead to the global health community embracing NCDs fully and to donors investing in them substantially. Heads of State should attend the UN Summit, and make public commitments to address NCDs in their own countries and globally. The Summit provides a wonderful opportunity for industry to show sincere engagement in improving the lives of people in the communities where they live and work. And for NGOs to show how they can do better.

The Summit should deliver some long-term political wins. It should address how NCDs will get included in the next iteration of MDGs and also how the world will pay for NCDs. It should identify some way the world will monitor progress post-summit. And it should foster true collaboration between multiple sectors globally and in-country, because a multi-sectoral approach is the best solution for these complex diseases. The UN could issue a “how-to” guide for countries – spelling out for example how countries can move from a disease-specific to a people-centered approach as the WHO recommends, or change from vertical to diagonal health delivery, or even how health systems could be strengthened.

I don’t think we can declare the Summit “transformative” until people feel a sense of personal responsibility and make healthy lifestyle choices to prevent disease, until leaders step up and “own” the crisis, until governments roll out national NCD plans, until we figure out how to measure results, and until health and non-health, state and non-state players work together to deliver sustainable solutions. This wont all happen before September, but the work should begin now.

NCDs are our generation’s problem to fix. And fix it we must. The UN Summit is our first step.

Originially posted on the Center for Strategic International Studies on April 6th. Nalini Saligram was the winner of the CSIS Blog Contest on NCDs.

The following is a guest post by Nina Pan. Nina is a longtime educator and disability advocate and, more recently, a person with IBS and the founder of IBS Impact.

By Nina Pan. April is Irritable Bowel Syndrome Awareness Month.  IBS is the most common functional gastrointestinal disorder.  Its hallmark symptoms are chronic abdominal discomfort or pain and altered form and frequency of stools in the absence of certain “red flags.” By conservative estimates, IBS affects 10-15% of the population or 30-45 million people of every age and ethnicity in the U.S. alone, although it is found worldwide. Two-thirds of people with IBS are women or girls.

Misperceptions about IBS abound. Because obvious abnormalities cannot be seen in the digestive tract from currently available clinical tests, for decades, IBS was dismissed by the medical profession as “all in the head.” Even today, the general public’s and media’s awareness of IBS is often vague.  Among the stereotypes are that IBS is caused by poor lifestyle habits and stresses of modern life, that IBS is a catchall diagnosis for any digestive complaint that can’t otherwise be classified, and that, because  IBS is not life threatening, it is not worthy of “serious” attention.

None of these misperceptions is true. In the last decade or two, research has shown that IBS is a complex disorder that appears to result from many factors, including dysregulation of the brain-gut axis and visceral hypersensitivity.  It is no longer considered a diagnosis of exclusion, but one that can be made with high accuracy using the symptom-based Rome criteria. Much about IBS is still poorly understood scientifically, but it is very real. Diet and stress have been shown to affect symptoms   to varying extents in different individuals, but those factors do not “cause” IBS. While many people with IBS have mild or sporadic symptoms that can be adequately helped by existing resources, for a large minority, IBS can significantly disrupt many aspects of quality of life. (more…)

The following is a guest post by Nicole Sweeny, originally posted on Policy Mic on March 22nd.

By Nicole Sweeny. In October 2010, seven months after the passage of health reform, hundreds of health care industry stakeholders gathered in an overcrowded conference room at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They were all eagerly waiting to give their input on one of the most buzzworthy provisions of health reform: the Accountable Care Organization. Implemented by Section 3022 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Accountable Care Organizations, or “ACOs,” are vaguely defined as groups of providers that will manage all aspects of care for the Medicare beneficiaries assigned to them (seniors over the age of 65 are eligible for Medicare). ACOs will have to meet quality standards, and if they meet cost savings targets they will receive a percentage of the savings as a monetary bonus. Dr. Donald Berwick, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has lauded ACOs as a means to further the goals of health reform and correct the fragmented health care delivery system in the United States.

However, the legislative framework for ACOs is so vague that, almost six months after this stakeholder meeting, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is still struggling to answer some of the most basic questions surrounding their formation. Who can legally be an ACO? Hospitals? Groups of physicians? How will antitrust and anti-kickback laws affect ACOs? What percentage of savings will be the monetary bonus?

Initially scheduled to be released in November, the regulation that will answer these questions has been delayed again and again, and stakeholders are getting frustrated. And with less than nine months to go until the ACO program is statutorily required to be implemented (January 1, 2012), many are rightfully worried that they still don’t know what their role will be in the program.

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was viewed by many as monumental. With over 1,000 pages and hundreds of provisions ranging from implementing state insurance exchanges to improving elder care in nursing homes to enacting approval changes for the biotechnology industry, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act literally impacts every American. However, like ACOs, many of the provisions are vague and leave the details to be hammered out bureaucratically. As a result, stakeholders are left in an anxious state of limbo, not knowing how to move forward in implementing one of the most extensive pieces of legislation to ever move through Congress.

As we move forward one year after health reform, we must remind ourselves that the bill was not signed, enacted, and implemented on March 23, 2010. The delay of regulations impacts stakeholders and consumers, and will ultimately affect the patient experience of care. The health reform bill is aptly named the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and those charged with its implementation need to do so in a manner that is both statutorily timely and consistent with its mission to improve the U.S. healthcare system.

Tina Krall

The following is a guest post by Fibroid Relief Executive Director Tina Krall.

By Tina Krall. One in four women in this country suffers from uterine fibroids — benign tumors that develop in the uterus. Not only can uterine fibroids be uncomfortable, inconvenient and sometimes even painful, but they create a number of less-than-desirable situations “down there.” 

Until recently, being diagnosed with uterine fibroids meant the strong possibility of a hysterectomy and sterility – a scary outcome considering they usually develop and become symptomatic during a woman’s childbearing years.

Advances in biotechnology have changed all that. Now, minimally invasive options – and even a noninvasive option – exist. Not only do these procedures have comparable success rates and significantly reduced recovery times, but the noninvasive option – Focused Ultrasound (we try to not refer to it as surgery) – preserves fertility. The only obstacle – getting the word out that these options exist.

That’s where Fibroid Relief – a non-profit dedicated to educating women about uterine fibroids and all of the options available to treat them — comes in. Fibroid Relief works tirelessly to not only make all of the treatment options — and their pros and cons — known, but also to create a forum for women at all stages of the treatment process to discuss their choices and personal experiences and offer each other support and advice (which we largely accomplish via our Facebook and YouTube pages).

Our efforts go beyond cyberspace, though. Together with hospitals and medical centers with the capabilities to perform many of the treatment options, including Focused Ultrasound, we host “Fibroid Relief At Last” patient education events all over the country (and in the UK, too!). These events include panel sessions featuring patients who have successfully undergone different treatments and the physicians who treated them. You can check out a video of our most recent event in Charlottesville, VA here.

Next month, Fibroid Relief At Last is coming to Houston, TX. We’re teaming up with Methodist and St. Luke’s Hospitals in Houston to host a night of conversation and education at the Houston Galleria on April 27th. Besides hearing from the panelists, patient coordinators from both hospitals will also be on hand to discuss personal situations and set up consultations. Registration for this event is now open and free of cost.