Health Issues Of The Public Health Field

Margaret saw first hand the devastation of infant, child and maternal mortality while serving as a visiting nurse in the poverty stricken lower east side of New York City.  This mortality resulted from the culmination of self-induced or illegal abortions that ultimately ended up in infection, causing death to partakers.  Margaret saw a need in society for education on the topic of birth control to prevent such mortality.

Men’s and women’s health and healthcare have been plagued by serious issues in the United States for generations. The articles Men at War: Vietnam and Agent Orange by Cynthia R. Daniels, Masculinities and Men’s Health: Moving toward Post-Superman Era Prevention by Don Sabo, Health Care Reform-A Woman’s Issue by Catherine DeLorey, and Why the Precautionary Principle? A Meditation of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) and the Breasts of Mothers by Sandra Steingraber, all center around different issues in healthcare. All the articles focus on the problems of healthcare and how it should be reformed, but two take on the topic of women’s health, while the other two focus their articles on men’s healthcare.

Reproductive health is aimed at giving an individual a sound state of mind to be liberal in an active sexual and reproductive process of fertility. This analysis has been women-centered to support women's rights and their perspective toward their reproductive health needs by providing health advocates, promote laws, and implement policies, research and services with an interest in women's health.

There has always been a stigma surrounding the topic of women’s health, especially the reproductive kind, as the world has set standards for a how a woman’s body should be. The stigma begins where, unfortunately for the world, women’s bodies oftentimes do not comply with these standards. Because of the rifts between expectation and reality girls are shamed, oftentimes unconsciously or via systemic responses and interactions. It becomes an ingrained and understood conduct, teaching girls that their bodies exist for objective purposes, and it lays the foundation for developing insecurities. Bodily insecurities tend to run so deeply that even women in adulthood shy away from taking proper care of themselves. Because of how taboo discussing women’s

Most Americans associate hospitals to be the standard place where women can give birth. However, women did not always deliver in hospitals. Gynecology, the medical practice dealing with the female reproductive system, did not emerge until the early nineteenth century. Before doctors came along, women used to hire midwives to deliver babies in the comfort of their own homes. In this paper I will examine the social, political, and scientific implications of how giving birth has transitioned from being a midwife’s job into that of a doctor’s. Furthermore, I will attempt to show how these implications intersect together to make birth a feminist issue. To support my argument, I will be referencing Tina Cassidy’s “The Dawn of the Doctors,” Abby Epstein’s documentary film The Business of Being Born, and Eesha Pandit’s article “America’s secret history of forced sterilization: Remembering a disturbing and not-so-distant past.” I argue that the processes surrounding birth are intersectional feminist issues because they are often manipulated by male figures pursuing money and authority, which ultimately compromises women’s health and power of choice.

Women have been fighting for the same rights and privileges of men for over a hundred years. The majority of these rights dealing with the basic autonomy of their own bodies and the right to make decisions about reproduction. The role of women has been seen as homemaker, caretaker, and ultimately Mother. Having children and raising children is often seen as the primary job of women in the home. However, in the early 20th century having a great number of children became a public health concern among women who were having multiple births. The number of women who died during childbirth in 1900 was six to nine in every 1000, while one in five children died within their first five years. (Achievements in Public Health, 2000) This was not seen as an epidemic, however, except by one woman, Margaret Sanger. Sanger believed that women deserved the right to choose and control their reproduction while offering safe methods of birth control. This paper examines the life of Margaret Sanger, provide information about the barriers she encounters during her work, and give insight to the contributions she has made to public health.

“For over 60 years, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been dedicated to protecting health and promoting quality of life through the prevention and control of disease, injury, and disability,” (CDC, 2012, p. 1). The organization has a focus of decreasing the health and economic disadvantages of the principal reasons of demise and incapacity through diverse programs, thus safeguarding an extended, prolific, vigorous life for people, (CDC, 2012). This paper will expound on The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and it is enhancement to the fundamental operations

William Beveridge was a man whom was asked by government to write a report on the best and most effective ways to help those on low incomes. This was after the Second World War when people felt they needed rewarding, which the government responded to by promising to create a more equal society. In Beveridge’s report in December 1942, he proposed that all people of a working age should contribute, which would benefit people who were sick, unemployed, retired, or widowed.

Over recent years, people are faced with different health related issues regardless of the advancement in the medical field (Kronenfeld, 2008). In this scenario, Molly is an 82 years old lady, who has developed health problems which make her feel isolated and lonely. The following essay highlights Molly’s leg ulcer, primary health care, wellness, health professionals and how these have been used to create a learning program for Molly. It also describes the pathophysiology of diabetes, Type II Diabetes and resources/ support services for the client’s spouse who is experiencing grief after the client died.

On the other hand, female’s role in society was to be wives. They take care of the children, do housework, or go to work which is limited to unskilled jobs or agriculture labor. Having a lot of children was a terrible panic for women because they had to go through the childbirth without medical access. Especially, women in working class families had to go back to work right after giving birth without taking any medicine because they needed money for the other children. Mothers’ health declined if they kept getting pregnant, so women tried many ways to prevent having children. However, most of the methods were not safe and sometimes dangerous for their body.

Women fought for equality in the medical profession, from being midwives and the town healer, to giving the world medical institutions, birth control, female only clinics and eventually chairing medical boards for well known medical institutions. The relationships between medicine and politics coincide with one another because these women pushed for better treatment of women's illnesses, bringing new legislation such as the legalization of birth control, women's clinics, leading them to very powerful positions in

Throughout the course of history, the field of healthcare has always been in a state of flux; however, healthcare has also had one steady aspect and that is women have always been at a disadvantage when it comes to traversing the system. Women have and still do face many obstacles within the health care system. These obstacles include research androcentrism, medicalization, gender stereotyping, reproductive rights, differential treatment, and fertility issues, among others… These obstacles must be explored and analyzed in order to better help women navigate the healthcare system and to support women’s rights in the present and future.

Women make up just slightly over half the U.S population (US Census Bureau, 2010) and should not be even considered a part of a minority group. The female population should acquire the same equal research attention as men do, especially when it comes to health issues. The unavoidable, yet quite simple realities of breastfeeding, menstruation, menopause, along with pregnancy require special scrutiny from medical experts. Those medical specialties are generally referred as gynecologists or obstetrics, who focus on the exclusive needs of a female’s reproductive health throughout their lifespan. Historically, the health needs of women have been disregarded as well as their fundamental rights. However, over the past few decades, it has grabbed the media and the government’s attention causing some major changes in support of women’s rights and health care.

Not only are women deliberately kept out of joining medical schools and medical practices in general, their bodies are also not typically studied in medical science and research, because instead, male bodies are more often used. This makes the male body seem dominantly normative and generalizes an idea that women’s bodies must be similar to men’s, and dangerously disregards women’s particular differences. This causes medical professionals to make decisions based on this research that may not be particularly appropriate for women, such as the fact that aspirin reduces the rate of heart attacks for men but not for women, much to many doctors’ surprise. Gender stereotypes also exist within the medical field that may prevent women from receiving the care and attention they need, as many doctors often assume women are emotional, and thus, exaggerating their symptoms, versus men who are believed to be more rational. This also affects the amount of care they receive, which sometimes is too much or too little because some procedures like cesarean sections and hysterectomies are performed too often when other options would be just as adequate, but unfortunately, women’s reproductive systems are more emphasized than other just as important aspects of their health. In other instances, they do not receive as much diagnosis or are not taken as seriously as men are, by their doctors. According to our earlier readings, men are more often to interrupt women, so men physicians can often

The Women’s Health Issues course this semester have been interesting and informative. I gained great perspective on health topics affecting women’s health status and ways biological and social factors put women at a higher stake for health issues. One of the most important thing I am taking away from this class is the importances of understanding women’s health, as a Public Health student women’s health has been a topic of interest for a long time. Coming from a developing country where many women grapple with health issues from discrimination and prescribed roles, it has been important for me to take this class and to have better understanding on health disparities that exist globally between women and men. In the following paragraphs I