Women's Health

New research presented at the 2018 American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals Annual Meeting, in Chicago, Illinois, reported on progress over the past 20 years in the care of pregnant women with systemic lupus erythepatosus (SLE) that has led to a decline in maternal mortality and intrauterine fetal death among patients with SLE.

In the United States, a woman age 30 to 70 years of age has a 1 in 8 chance of dying from a noncommunicable disease (NCDs), putting the nation on par with low and middle-income countries, and setting it apart with Iceland among high-income countries, according to a report published Thursday in The Lancet.

A recent review of nearly 582,000 heart attack cases over the span of 19 years found that female patients had a significantly higher survival rate when treated by a female physician in the emergency department.

Chronic diseases, insufficient access to care, and social determinants of health are targets that can help reduce maternal mortality.

The global age-standardized lung cancer mortality rate among women is expected to increase by 43% from 2015 to 2030, while the global age-standardized breast cancer mortality rate is projected to decrease by 9%, according to an analysis published in Cancer Research.

Lifestyle factors and individual characteristics, rather than air pollution, explain which women with asthma go on to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), resulting in asthma and COPD overlap syndrome (ACOS), according to a new study published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

While the connection between diabetes and cancer has been known, this study was the first to show that women with diabetes face a higher risk than men with the disease.

Findings were consistent with earlier studies that link long work hours and diabetes as well as long periods of sitting with diabetes and obesity.

In the United States, too many of our mothers are dying during and after childbirth. Costs of childbirth care are high for everyone—for health plans, for taxpayers, and for families. We are moving in the wrong direction, and it is well past time to change course.

The risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children was higher in mothers with type 1 diabetes (T1D), a recent study found.

Haywood Brown, MD, immediate past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology, discusses the Alliance for Innovation in Maternal health (AIM) program which is designed to decrease the top-leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality.

While global maternal mortality rates (MMR), particularly in the developed nations, have been dropping, US MMR has seen a steady rise. Protecting the well-being of women, both during and after pregnancy, is vital. Here are some updates on the status of maternal care in the United States.

Mary Norine Walsh, MD, immediate past president of the American College of Cardiology, discusses the risks for pregnant women with hypertension.

Mary Norine Walsh, MD, immediate past president of the American College of Cardiology, discusses the cause of the recent increase in maternal mortality, and the importance of team-based care to address it.

While cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death among women as well as men, and while both sex and gender differences in CVD and its treatments have been well documented, women continue to be less represented than men in clinical trials of drugs to treat CVD. Among proposed reasons for this phenomenon are the recruitment of younger patients, inclusion criteria that tend to select men, and exclusion criteria that are more common in women.

Even though her final stretch at the helm of Planned Parenthood was not easy, Cecile Richards told the nation's obstetricians she is optimistic because of the activism she sees among women and girls at the grassroots level. "Women are on fire," she said.

Women account for over 75% of Americans who experience migraines, which could be attributable to the way that estrogen levels affect cells in the brain, according to new study findings.

Humana has launched a new maternity bundled payment model with 5 practices in Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, and Texas to improve quality, outcomes, and cost across the entire perinatal episode of care for women with low- to moderate-risk pregnancies.

Christie’s Place, a nonprofit social service organization, puts a large focus on social determinants of health to help their clients not only keep up with their medical care, but also improve their quality of life.

The CDC reported recently that the percentage of privately insured reproductive-age women who filled a prescription for a medication for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) soared 344% from 2003 (0.9%) to 2015 (4.0%).

The authors observed a marked shift toward treatment of higher-risk subsets of younger postmenopausal women (with prior fracture and/or with osteoporosis), and away from women at lower risk.

Truly improving equity in childbirth care requires a bold new path forward.

Among women treated at health centers receiving federal funding under Title X, the proportion receiving cervical cancer screening tests declined significantly from 2005 to 2015, according to new research.

In recent years, testing for the BRCA1/2 gene mutations has increased among women in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, helping to drastically reduce the gap in testing rates between the groups.

Racial bias happens everywhere; it happens, often implicitly, as decisions are made about access to childbirth care in rural America.