women's health

When Vicky Phelan discovered she’d been given a false negative test result when in fact her test showed strong signs of cervical cancer, she took her case to Ireland’s High Court.   If she’d known, a hysterectomy could have given her a 90% chance of survival—instead she…

The gist of Jen Gunter’s new book “The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth From the Medicine” does exactly what it says on the cover. The gist: “It’s a vagina, not a piña colada,” writes the Twitter-famous ob-gyn.Human understanding of the…

In the US and Canada, pro-sterilization policies aimed at controlling indigenous populations are widely regarded as a shameful relic of colonization and 20th century eugenics.   In the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of indigenous women underwent the procedure—shrinking families…

Europe has a health equity problem: Women in the most disadvantaged groups can expect to live 7 fewer years than their advantaged peers. For men, the gap is up to 15 years. And things are not getting better: Health inequities have persisted or gotten worse in many of the 53…

Resilience—the personal resources an individual has to effectively deal with difficult challenges—may be key in mitigating impacts of stress during pregnancy and postpartum depression.  

A Brooklyn company is marketing an at-home rape kit—a variety of swabs and a container to collect saliva—that allows users to gather samples to deliver to a police station or university Title IX office.   But critics note that DNA collection is a small part of a sexual…

In Africa and Asia, 2 million women and girls live with obstetric fistula that leaves them incontinent.   The condition is “effectively a hole in the birth canal” resulting from lengthy, obstructed labor without key emergency care, Sarah Newey reports. In developed nations…

Amid Venezuela’s deepening humanitarian and economic crisis, a critical shortage of contraceptives is placing an estimated 9 million women at risk of pregnancy.   A small portion of emergency assistance has gone to reproductive health. Of the 45,000 hormonal implants…

Winnie Byanyima will be the new executive director of UNAIDS, the agency announced yesterday.  

In the 60 years since the pill came to market, contraceptives for women haven’t really changed. Even Amphora, a “new” over-the-counter gel that women can apply before sex, is essentially an updated version of spermicidal lube. Why the sluggish innovation? The pharma…