February 2005
Current Issue
Past Issues
About Us
Public Affairs
Baylor Home
A Matter of Health
Making 'you' a priority
For many years, women's health – particularly anything other than reproductive health – received short shrift. As late as 1990, prominent cholesterol researchers justified excluding women from important studies of treatments because, they said, women's heart problems develop later.
Including women would add unreasonable cost and size to the studies, they said. As a result, women were treated based on information from studies that included mainly men in their 50s and 60s.
The 1990s saw a reversal of that trend, starting with the establishment of the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health. Headed by the formidable Vivian Pinn, MD, the office set an agenda that put women's health issues before the academic establishment, the NIH and, most important, the public and their legislative representatives.
Today, the exclusion of women from studies has to be justified – not their inclusion. The threat that heart disease, lung and colon cancer and diabetes poses to women is understood. Public health tries to spread the message that these diseases are as much a danger to women as men.
These changes did not come about because women accepted what they were told and sat in the corner. When they began to realize that the systematic exclusion of their gender from studies endangered their health, they demanded changes. They repeated those demands, more and more forcefully, until the powers-that-be capitulated.
Today, when First Lady Barbara Bush backs the "red dress" effort that spotlights the area of women and heart disease, her actions are not controversial. They are, instead, a positive example of what happens when concerned women become worried about themselves and demand that positive action be taken.
Wear your red dress this month and many more. In fact, it would be best for women that, at least figuratively, they never take it off. Their health is too important to be ignored.
| A Matter of Health | |
 |
Making 'you' a priority |