Women’s Health Advocacy brings together academic studies and personal narratives to demonstrate how women use a variety of arguments, forms of writing, and communication strategies to effect change in a health system that is not only often difficult to participate in, but which can be actively harmful. It explicates the concept of rhetorical ingenuity—the creation of rhetorical means for specific and technical, yet extremely personal, situations. At a time when women’s health concerns are at the center of national debate, this rhetorical ingenuity provides means for women to uncover latent sources of oppression in women’s health and medicine and to influence matters of research, funding, policy, and everyday access to healthcare in the face of exclusion and disenfranchisement. This accessible collection will be inspiring reading for academics and students in health communication, medical humanities, and women’s studies, as well as for activists, patients, and professionals.

Recent history has witnessed a revolution in womens health care. Beginning in the late 1960s, women in communities across the United States challenged medical and male control over womens health. Few people today realize the extent to which these grassroots efforts shifted power and responsibility from the medical establishment into womens hands as health care consumers, providers, and advocates. Into Our Own Hands traces the womens health care movement in the United States. Richly documented, this study is based on more than a decade of research, including interviews with leading activists; documentary material from feminist health clinics and advocacy organizations; a survey of womens health movement organizations in the early 1990s; and ethnographic fieldwork. Sandra Morgen focuses on the clinics born from this movement, as well as how the movements encounters with organized medicine, the state, and ascendant neoconservative and neoliberal political forces of the 1970s to the1980s shaped the confrontations and accomplishments in womens health care. The book also explores the impact of political struggles over race and class within the movement organizations.

Neither legalization of abortion nor scientific and political advances in contraception and abortion ensure that training and research in family planning are routinely integrated into medical education. Without integration, subsequent generations of healthcare professionals are not prepared to incorporate evidence-based family planning into their practices, teaching, or research. Omission of this crucial component prevents the cultural and professional normalization of an often stigmatized and embattled aspect of women's health. Taking the successful US-based Ryan and Family Planning Fellowship programs as templates for training, teaching, and academic leadership, this book describes the integration of family planning and pregnancy termination into curricula with an international outlook. With an evidence- and systems-based approach, the book is a unique and practical guide to inspire and train the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Combine advocacy with community based participatory research to help those who can’t help themselves Recent natural, man-made, and health-related threats to our well-being have created a need for researchers to develop new interventions to help the marginalized populations of the world who are most affected by these threats. Women’s Health: New Frontiers in Advocacy & Social Justice Research explores the importance of intervention efforts when the researcher takes on the role of advocate to represent those who can’t represent themselves. This unique book examines how the marginalization of community groups, including refugee women, rural women, and Indigenous women, affects their access to the programs and services they need in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Women’s Health: New Frontiers in Advocacy & Social Justice Research looks at different levels of community preparation in the research process, examining implementations of the CBPR (Community Based Participatory Research) models that are specifically tailored to the needs of particular communities, including a project on cervical cancer initiated by the Indigenous women of Australia, and a five-year study of Type 2 diabetes by Hispanic women and researchers in the Western United States. The book’s articles—contributed by academics, practitioners, and researchers—focus primarily on the concept that rigorous research can be conducted while still attending to the needs of community members through a more action-oriented advocacy that promotes the special interests of those members. Women’s Health: New Frontiers in Advocacy & Social Justice Research examines: qualitative and quantitative research findings on women with refugee backgrounds in Australia and New Zealand healthcare experiences of women living in rural Victoria, Australia lay-health advocacy cost-effective options for reducing adverse health outcomes in resource-poor settings domestic violence advocacy cancer screening and treatment among Indigenous women in Queensland, Australia advocacy among Hispanic farmworkers in Southeast Idaho and much more Women’s Health: New Frontiers in Advocacy & Social Justice Research is an important resource on the role of advocacy in community based participatory research. The book is an essential professional resource for anyone working to address social injustice in marginalized communities.

Appropriate for undergraduate students studying health education, nursing and women's studies, New Dimensions in Women's Health, Seventh Edition is a comprehensive, modern text that offers students the tools to understand the health of women of all cultures, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and sexual orientations.

Revised and update to keep pace with changes in the field, the best-selling New Dimensions in Women's Health, Eighth Edition provides a modern look at the health of women of all cultures, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and sexual orientations. Written for undergraduate students within health education, nursing, and women's studies programs, the text provides readers with the critical information needed optimize their well-being, avoid illness and injury, and support their overall health. The authors took great care to provide in-depth coverage of important aspects of women's health and to examine the contributing epidemiological, historical, psychosocial, cultural, ethical, legal, political, and economic influences.

Women have made it clear that they desire a broader, integrative approach to their care. Here, for the first time, Integrative Women's Health weaves together the best of conventional treatments with mind-body interventions, nutritional strategies, herbal therapies, dietary supplements, acupuncture, and manual medicine, providing clinicians with a roadmap for practicing comprehensive integrative care. Presenting the best evidence in a concise, accessible format, and written exclusively by female clinicians, this text addresses many aspects of women's health, including feminine perspectives on aging, spirituality and sexuality, specific recommendations for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV, headaches, multiple sclerosis, depression, anxiety, and cancer, as well as integrative approaches to premenstrual syndrome, pregnancy, menopause, fibroids, and endometriosis. Homeopathic, Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners provide insight into the ways in which these systems manage reproductive conditions. As leading educators in integrative medicine, editors Dr. Maizes and Dr. Low Dog demonstrate how clinicians can implement their recommendations in practice, but they also go beyond practical care to examine how to motivate patients, enhance a health history, and understand the spiritual dimensions of healing.

Because women have different health needs than men, they experience the health care system differently. Women have higher morbidity, experiencing more disease and disability throughout the life span. At the same time, because women live longer, they are more susceptible to late-on-set disease, such as osteoporosis and dementia. Yet until recently, the question of gender equity in U.S. health care has received little attention.