The Biden administration is trying to improve women's health care by accelerating research on women and disease. But the initiative is ignoring the real problem, writes Diane O’Leary. We need to train doctors to stop blaming women's mental health for their symptoms.
The writer a researcher in gender and digital rights.
ACCESS to healthcare is part of our basic right to a life of dignity. Despite its universality, healthcare and its denial are felt along lines of class, gender, sexuality, religion, race/ethnicity, (dis)ability and often an intersection of all these. The healthcare system itself reproduces inequalities and systems of oppression that undergird society through inaccessibility and skewed priorities.
Throughout history, the centre of medical research and the reference point for medicine was men’s bodies. In clinical research, women are overwhelmingly underrepresented in trials for medicines and treatments. For instance, while women make up over half of the 35 million people living with HIV worldwide, most trials for treatments focus on men despite the fact that women respond differently to the infection as well as the drugs administered for treatment. This fundamental exclusion on the basis of sex at the starting point of health
UMB News
Support UMB s Increasing Efforts to Deal with the COVID-19 Pandemic
During this important period, please consider supporting UMB s critical vaccine research and development, advancing its work in human virology, and donating to critical emergency funds especially designed for specific students in need.
We truly appreciate your gifts in this time of great need. December 23, 2020
Vaccines. Vaccinations. Vaccine hesitancy. These words have become pervasive in today’s lexicon, particularly now as vaccines equipped to battle the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) have been authorized for emergency use.
But where do individual rights fit in when public health is threatened? What roles do psychology, faith, and reasoning play in decision-making about whether to trust or reject science? How do different health professions contribute to vaccine development, research, vaccine distribution, and public health education?