America Flunks Women's Health
Aug. 22, 2000 (Washington) -- The nation's overall state of women's health is "unsatisfactory," according to a "report card" released today by several organizations.
According to the report, the nation met just five health status benchmarks. Those five measures included an increased percentage of women aged 50 years and older who have mammograms, a reduced AIDS rate, and lower death rates from heart disease, breast cancer, and lung cancer. Even so, the improvements were not seen across all states, with the exception of mammography screening for breast cancer.
The nation failed to meet the report's standards for 22 other health measures for women, including smoking rates, binge drinking, stroke death rate, and unintended pregnancy rate.
The report was issued by the National Women's Law Center; the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's women's health and leadership program; and the Lewin Group, a health policy consulting firm. The Lewin Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quintiles Transnational Corp., which is affiliated with WebMD.
With similarly unimpressive results, the report also graded each state and the District of Columbia on 25 measures of women's health status, and compared them without rank on 32 other indicators.
No state was ranked "satisfactory" on women's health, and eight, along with the District, were given a failing grade. The only benchmark met by all states and the District was mammography screening. The report's health status indicators were mostly based on "healthy people" national goals set for 2000 by the federal government, although the researchers used federal 2010 goals in some cases.
"State and federal policymakers are letting American women down," said Lewin official Susanna Ginsburg. "There has not been a consistent and comprehensive focus on improving women's overall health and well-being." The authors noted that women's care was also seriously affected by lack of access to adequate health insurance, coverage for prescription drugs, and coverage for specific conditions affecting women.
But the report may have suggested a few glints of sunlight for women's health. For example, although it found that fully 14% of women lack health insurance, that is still better than the overall national uninsured rate of 18%.