Women’s Health is a Woman’s Right

Women’s Health is a Woman’s Right

Good afternoon, everyone!

I stand here today to talk about something that affects everyone’s lives in some way: women’s health, specifically their heart health. (Yes, that includes you too guys). It is a topic that is often brushed aside in the scientific community, overlooked, and under-researched. Now, let me ask you this: In a world where women are the backbone of many families, our communities, and society, why does their health continue to be undervalued? Why does their health continue to be overlooked? Why does their health continue to be neglected?

We, as the next generation of researchers, cannot allow this to continue. We must put this to a stop. A woman’s health is a woman’s right.

This means that treatments may differ significantly between genders. For instance, the Washington Post highlighted numerous stories of gender bias in healthcare. Women reported that their pain and suffering has been dismissed or misdiagnosed by doctors’ due to doctors dismissing them as ‘emotional’ (Bever, 2022).” (ethos) This bias is rooted in historical clinical practices. Tests that are considered the “gold standard” were based on studies from 1977 that excluded women from these clinical trials. Although this FDA restriction was thankfully lifted in 1993, the healthcare industry is still suffering from outdated standards that lack diversity, gender, and race considerations. As a result, we really don’t know much about women’s health, and this gap in our knowledge is hindering proper diagnosis. (logos) For instance, reviews published by the National Institutes of Health and ScienceDirect discuss how heart disease often presents differently in women than in men. Women tend to have more subtle symptoms like fatigue and back pain when compared to men — who typically experience chest pain. These differences can either lead to an underdiagnosis of a female patient or, worse, a deathly diagnosis.

Take, for example, my neighbor, Carol. She inspired me to write this speech because of her story. Carol is an extremely active woman. Every other weekend she would pack her hiking equipment, tie it up to her van, and go on adventures with her husband. These adventures suddenly started getting more and more difficult for her, and she wasn’t sure if the recent passing of her 60th birthday was impacting her body. She had an extreme case of back pain. She had told me that after hiking she had visited her doctor, and her symptoms were dismissed as mere stress. It wasn’t until she asked for further testing that she was diagnosed with a heart disease called coronary artery disease. If it weren’t for her asking for another scan, a delay in diagnosis could have been fatal. (anecdote and pathos)

Though I mainly talked about heart health, reproductive health is also an issue to consider advocating about too. Conditions such as: endodermis, polycystic ovary syndrome (pcos), and menopause are often overlooked. Knowing this, we should all come together to advocate for more funding and support for women’s health research. We owe it to our mothers, daughters, and sisters. I hope you agree with me that women’s health is profoundly important to us all. Thank you for listening!

Works Cited

Bever, Lindsey. “Do You Feel That Your Doctor Has Dismissed Your Pain?” The Washington Post, 28 Jan. 2022, www.washingtonpost.com/health/gender-bias-healthcare/.

Maas, A., & Appelman, Y. (2010). Gender differences in coronary heart disease. Netherlands Heart Journal, 18(12), 598–603. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12471-010-0841-y