Brochure | Women Health | Gynecology

Depoliticizing and Prioritizing Comprehensive Women's Health: Jessica Horwitz, MPH, FNP-C

2025-05-14 - 2025-05

Women's Health Week 2025 arrives at a time when discussions around women's health are highly politicized. How can Women's Health Week 2025 be leveraged as a platform to advocate for policies that support and expand access to comprehensive women's health care?

I think the thing that comes to mind mostly is how we can actually depoliticize this topic as it relates to women's health, and recognize that the issue of improving comprehensive care for women that enables women to live full, vibrant, healthy lives shouldn't be a political topic.

Too often, women's health is broken down into body parts or conditions, and sometimes those body parts being politicalized body parts. The reality is that's the thing that actually is going to level the playing field is bringing women's holistic picture of their health together to improve health outcomes. That's something that we can all universally align on across the political spectrum. What I would love to see is a removal of the politicalization and a move toward comprehensive care for women that actually keeps them healthy throughout their entire life.

As a mom of 3 daughters, as a person who has birthed 3 babies, and as a women's health professional, I feel like the fact that we are even including the pelvic floor and talking about it is a huge step in destigmatizing. The reality is, is all humans, regardless of sex or gender, have a pelvic floor. For too long, there has been sort of shame and stigma around what it means to address women's pelvic floor. The reality is, these are a group of muscles that are deeply responsible for a lot of our function and well-being, and so super cool, frankly, that this is the theme of this year's Women's Health Week.

I think that what it tells us is that there's a move to actually destigmatize all sorts of things in women's health that for too often have been stigmatized. We start to break down barriers by starting to normalize the conversation and if even one person feels seen and feels motivated to talk to their clinician, or talk to a therapist that they may know, because this is the theme of the week, that's a win.

It has the potential to have a lot more of a significant impact beyond the pelvic floor. I think as we start to normalize other stigmatized things related to, whether it's mental health or whether it's women's weight and body image, or all of these places that we've held too much angst and stigma, when we're all in this together.

Women's brain health and brain capital

2025-05-12 - 2025-05

Brain capital, broadly defined as a form of capital that prioritizes brain skills and brain health, is urgently required. Integrating social, emotional and cognitive brain resources is a great asset for a wealthy and healthy society. Nevertheless, there is little investment in women's brain health on a global scale. Women, on average, spend nine additional years in poor health compared with men, which hinders their participation in education, the workforce and society at large. This Perspective highlights the crucial intersection between investing in women's brain health and the concept of 'brain capital.' Here we argue that addressing the women's health gap could potentially increase the global economy by US $1 trillion in annual incremental gross domestic product. Furthermore, we hope this article will serve as a springboard to stimulate discussion and concrete stakeholder actions toward closing the women's brain health gap and will add to the growing discourse on sex- and gender-specific healthcare and its impact on global community well-being.

Message on National Women's Health Week, 2025

2025-05-13 - 2025-05

During National Women's Health Week, we promote and support the health and well-being of our Nation's mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and friends.

From my first day in office, my Administration has worked to protect women and girls from gender extremism and has brought common sense and biological reality back to America. Moreover, the Make America Healthy Again Commission was established to address the root causes of our Nation's health crisis—from poor nutrition and chronic diseases to preventable conditions – issues impacting women across the nation. By advancing food transparency, promoting physical fitness, and restoring health education, we are working to give women, and all Americans, stronger futures and better quality of life.

My Administration is confronting the high cost of healthcare, which places a tremendous toll on American families. We are working to improve price transparency, stop surprise billing, and ensure patients have clear information about their coverage before receiving care. Historic steps have been taken to lower prescription drug prices, including capping the cost of insulin and expanding access to low-cost generics. By holding providers accountable and putting patients first, we are lowering costs, improving care delivery, and restoring fairness to the American healthcare system.

This week, we reaffirm our commitment to improve women's health so that they may live fuller and healthier lives, ensuring that all generations of American women thrive and continue to drive the success of our Nation.

Sybil Shainwald, lawyer and women's health activist, 1928-2025

2025-05-10 - 2025-05

When, in 1962, Sybil Shainwald applied for a place at Columbia University's law school she was roundly rebuffed. The dean said that admitting her would deprive a young man, who might have a 40-year career ahead of him, even though she was already undertaking a doctorate in history at the university and the two departments operated a joint PhD/JD programme. In fact, after finally graduating in law in her late forties, Shainwald, who has died just short of her 97th birthday, bested most of the men admitted in her stead in both longevity and impact, scoring a string of landmark victories over pharmaceutical companies on behalf of women who had been irreparably damaged by ill-tested drugs and devices. As Shainwald drily put it in an interview with Veteran Feminists of America to mark her 90th birthday: “Luckily, I’ve been practising for more than 40 years.” Anthony Crowell, dean of New York Law School which gave her the welcome she had been denied at Columbia and where she became a long-serving trustee, said right up to the final weeks of her life, “she was still getting calls from potential clients”. Raised in Brooklyn in 1928, Sybil Schwartz, as she was then, moved to Virginia at the age of 16 to attend college at William & Mary. The choice of an institution in a state so culturally dissonant with her home borough signalled a willingness to forge her own path that characterised the rest of her life, suggests Crowell: “She was somebody who understood how to very carefully but very, very successfully step out of bounds . . . and to shape a world that she could have great influence and success in.” After college she combined marriage and raising four children with a career, teaching in public schools and then working in the consumer movement. But after gaining her law degree through evening study at 48 — one of just seven women in a 169-strong class — she struggled to find a niche and had to join a firm unpaid. “I asked if I could take space at a law firm that had only hired men. They said ‘yes, we don’t usually do that, but we’ll do it for you’. And, of course, they called me sweetheart,” she recalled. A determination to challenge this power imbalance found expression in her work defending women harmed by the pharmaceutical industry. Shainwald believed it had frequently acted without any regard for safety, particularly in relation to contraceptive implants and devices. “We pay with our tax dollars for the research and with our lives for the results,” she told her interviewer. One battle concerned the Dalkon Shield, a cheap intrauterine device claimed to prevent pregnancy in women too “forgetful” to take the pill. In a speech in 2016, she said: “Nine months after marketing the device, the company first began a two-year baboon safety study. One in every eight baboons died, and 30 per cent suffered uterine perforation. The results were never made public.”
Her most significant triumphs concerned DES, a drug given to pregnant women to prevent miscarriage which turned out to be a carcinogen. She won a groundbreaking case against Eli Lilly on behalf of Joyce Bichler, who at the age of 17 had developed clear cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina and had to have all her reproductive organs and most of her sex organs removed. Her mother had taken the drug. The men in her firm had been reluctant to take the case to trial, she recalled. It had “turned out to be the most important and pivotal case in the women’s health movement. It brought to light the callous nature of the pharmaceutical industry and is the most egregious example of the industry’s treatment of women”. Her advocacy, pursued over many years, on behalf of DES victims led to one of the achievements that she was most proud of: overturning in New York state a law that said under-21s could not bring cases. She was also instrumental in expanding the statute of limitations for women’s health cases in New York. Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist who acted as an expert witness in some of the cases she brought and became a close friend, said Shainwald was, first and foremost “a very ardent, passionate feminist”. This even extended to the art she amassed. “She always collected only art by women and of women,” Swan said. Despite the bitter battles she waged with the pharma industry over decades, Swan said she did not believe Shainwald ever felt daunted or afraid: “I don’t think much threatened Sybil, honestly — she was really tough. And she knew she was right.”

Women's health is a $1 trillion opportunity that demands greater investment

2025-05-05 - 2025-05

Investing in women's health enables us to unlock better outcomes, increase productivity and secure longer lives for half the world's population.
However, women's health has long been underrepresented and underinvested in, and is often deemed to be a niche space.
Women's health represents a $1 trillion annual opportunity for the global economy by 2040, potentially with multigenerational benefits.
Investing in women's health enables us to unlock better outcomes, increase productivity and secure longer lives for half the world's population. It therefore seems staggering that women's health, which has long been underrepresented and underinvested in, is so often described as being a niche space.

At the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2025 in Davos, conversations around women's health steadily gained momentum throughout the week, building on successes from previous years. For example, the Forum's private session on 'Prioritizing Women's Health: Committing to a Better and More Prosperous Future' or even an event we hosted on the sidelines of the official Forum programme at Goals House on Healthcare: Building Sustainable Futures through Automation & AI’, where women’s health featured heavily.

During the women's health events at Davos that I was fortunate enough to be a part of, there was a central thread: women's health may finally be gaining recognition, but recognition alone will not drive change; investment will.

Black Book Research Celebrates Women's Health Month With Complimentary Release of Comprehensive 2025 Industry Report on Women's Health IT Innovations

2025-05-07 - 2025-05

NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 7, 2025 (Newswire.com) - In recognition of Women's Health Month, Black Book Research announces the release of its authoritative 2025 report, the Black Book of Women's Health Information Technology and Software Innovations. Offered as a no-fee resource to industry stakeholders, this extensive analysis evaluates the leading and most innovative women's health IT solutions based on independent assessments from users, healthcare providers, payers, and industry professionals.

The comprehensive report ranks top-performing vendors across 40 distinct women's health technology categories, assessed through 18 rigorous key performance indicators (KPIs), including user experience, clinical effectiveness, interoperability, patient engagement, and predictive analytics.

"Women's health is witnessing unprecedented innovation and investment, yet clarity around which technologies deliver real-world value remains crucial," said Doug Brown, Founder of Black Book Research. "By releasing this report during Women's Health Month, we aim to provide transparency and informed insights, empowering healthcare organizations to make strategic decisions that ultimately enhance patient care without commercial bias."

The 2025 Black Book study covers more than 300 vendors, highlighting those that stakeholders identify as transformative in addressing critical health challenges including fertility, maternal health, menopause management, virtual OB-GYN ecosystems, and health equity solutions.

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