Thank you for your support in 2019.

The Society for Women's Health Research values your collaboration and support, which has helped us to reach many of our goals this past year. Check out SWHR's 2019 accomplishments below.

As we celebrate our 30th anniversary in 2020, we look forward to continuing our efforts to make women's health mainstream.
2019 Year in Review
IN THE NEWS
"This idea that women are just men with pesky hormones has led to some woman-shaped blind spots in medicine," comedian John Oliver explained in a segment on  Last Week Tonight  looking at gender and racial bias in medicine. SWHR staff participated in background interviews and provided historical information for this segment.
SWHR CEO Dr. Amy M. Miller and Board member Dr. Nieca Goldberg share their women's health expertise in this  New York Post  article about how the medical field dismissed female health concerns for decades. Goldberg (pictured) says she often sees women who have had their concerns dismissed by another doctor.
When it comes to the differences between men and women, “there’s a lot we don’t know,” SWHR’s Dr. Amy M. Miller says in this DAME Magazine article exploring science’s failure to study women’s health. “We only started including women in research 15 or 20 years ago and that means a lot of generic drugs may not have been investigated in women. We don’t know if a drug isn’t as effective in a woman’s body as it is in a man’s.”
Women in pain need innovation. In a commentary in Morning Consult , SWHR CEO Dr. Amy M. Miller shines a light on how women are disproportionately affected by painful conditions. She writes about SWHR’s efforts to raise increase research and innovation around migraine and endometriosis, and says it’s time for policymakers to act to address women’s pain.
Video:  SWHR focuses on efforts to better understand women's pain.  Watch now.
SCIENCE AND HEALTH
Migraine is a disabling neurological disease that requires patients and health care providers to work together to manage symptoms that can cause significant disruption to patients’ lives.

To ass ist people with migraine in navigating their care, SWHR created a Migraine Patient Toolkit with useful information about migraine diagnosis and treatment options, as well as tips on interacting with health care providers and health insurance compa nies to achieve the best possible outcomes.


Women face a multitude of barriers to receiving quality care for endometriosis, a chronic, often painful disease that affects about 10% of reproductive-age women. SWHR published an expert review in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology highlighting areas of need in endometriosis to improve a woman’s diagnosis, treatment, and access to quality care. 

In the News

Limiting students' bathroom use or treating it as a discipline issue can have serious health implications — especially when a kid needs to go, but can’t. This  article in  The Atlantic  explores school bathroom policies, citing  SWHR's survey  of school nurses.
POLICY AND ADVOCACY
SWHR and FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute, released a report outlining the positive changes for women’s health research resulting from the 21st Century Cures Act. The report details how the Cures Act has affected the landscape for women in clinical research and the understanding of sex- and gender-based differences in disease. As Congress considers crafting a second iteration of the Cures Act, SWHR encourages policymakers to create incentives that encourage financial investment in women’s health research across public and private sectors.  Read the report.
Patient access to medical innovations is based, in part, on assessments that determine the value of these new health care interventions by looking at clinical and economic evidence. To ensure women can appropriately access health care innovations, SWHR developed a set of principles to guide value frameworks and assessments on factors relevant to women and the ongoing improvement of their health.  Read SWHR's principles.

The appropriate inclusion of women — as patients, caregivers, and health care decision-makers — is necessary for the successful development of medical products. SWHR developed a set of principles to address patient population diversity (including sex and gender) in the FDA's Patient-Focused Drug Development Program, which is designed to obtain patient perspectives on diseases and disease treatments. Read SWHR's principles.
ENGAGE WITH SWHR
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Join SWHR in celebrating 30 years of advancing women's health and looking ahead to achieving our vision of making women's health mainstream.  Sponsorships and tickets available!

Check out highlights from last year's event in this video!