I began my career in women’s health out of a deep need for solutions. After giving birth for the fourth time I needed help badly. Healing myself and keeping my marriage vital was my first motivation to start Good Clean Love in my kitchen. Like so many other women I would go looking for answers at my doctor’s office about my persistent pain and recurring infections without much satisfaction. Not only short on answers to my questions but always offering the same solutions to every problem I presented with was discouraging. Back then, I didn’t know how common my pain was. I also couldn’t have told you that the standard of care in women’s health medicine had not changed in decades. I couldn’t have told you that two out of three infections that women go to the doctor for are misdiagnosed. I couldn’t even have told you that it was my vaginal microbiome that played a crucial role in all of my symptoms.
Many Women Suffer in Silence
My own pain and bewilderment was my initiation into the inequality of women’s health that played out for years in my own body. Initially I was seeking solutions that would allow me to maintain my sex life, but the more I learned, the more that I came to realize that for most women, issues with their libido and desire are only one aspect of the complex and remarkably common problems of vaginal dysbiosis. Vaginal dysbiosis gets diagnosed as many different conditions including common recurrent bacterial vaginosis and urinary tract infections, common skin conditions like Lichens Sclerosis, and common chronic pain conditions like vulvodynia.
Like most women I suffered silently. Many conditions like PCOS and Endometriosis take a decade to diagnose and when it is finally diagnosed it is usually because the patient is now infertile. A big part of my education as I learned about the toxic ingredients that made up the base of most women’s health products began as I started attending medical conferences and listening to health care providers share stories of their patients whose conditions would not resolve and their frustration for not having the tools to address these conditions that I began to understand just how huge the problem was. This was when my focus shifted to understanding how the vaginal microbiome impacts women with all of these conditions and our research was formalized in our sister biotechnology company, Vaginal Biome Science.
Lack of Research and Funding in Women’s Health Historically
Mostly what we learned and continue to learn was how little research and few publications even existed on almost every topic concerning vaginal health. It is easy to be a pioneer in a space that no one has ever looked at. And the lack of research didn’t just apply to vaginal health but women’s health overall – which only receives 4% of all research dollars spent annually. I wish I could say that this neglect is benign. But, it isn’t.
For much of documented history women have been excluded from medical and science research and understanding, creating a healthcare system that, like many other institutions in the world, is made by men for men. The origins of this discrimination and bias began when Aristotle referred to “the female as a mutilated male”. The vast majority of diagnosis for women for over a century was the catchall of hysteria. And it wasn’t until June 10th 1993 when Congress passed the NIH Revitalization Act which required the inclusion of women in clinical research trials. No research on women’s health was ever funded by the NIH until that time.
Women’s Equity in Healthcare Today
Fast forward 30 years and research funding has not even begun to equalize. Of the nearly $42 billion the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends on medical research each year, only approximately $5 billion of that funding is directed specifically at women's health. The extent to this inequity is outrageous when you consider that not only is research bias directed towards male diseases, but even within research studies almost all of the cells and animals studied in medical science have all been based on male biology. Because the differences between male and female biology exists in every cell of the body, Dr. Janine Austin Clayton, associate director for women’s health research at the NIH, told the New York Times that the result is: “We literally know less about every aspect of female biology compared to male biology.”
What makes change particularly challenging in women’s health is the ways in which the FDA code still in use from 1938 does not include the words “woman”, “vagina” and “pregnancy”- these are termed “other conditions”. The only use case available to submit products for clearance at the FDA remains “To ease penile insertion”. These antiquated codes and categorizations turn every vaginal condition into a disease state which requires a prescription solution. And as mentioned before, the standard of care still leads with prescription antibiotics and steroids. At a time, where half of all women have lost control over their reproductive health, providing women with agency over their vaginal care has never felt more urgent.
I am heartened by the new interest and increasing dialogue surrounding women’s health that has emerged in politics and is trending on social media of late. And yet offering only $100 Million for research after decades of neglect is an insult. In the recent competition for these funds, the request for proposals garnered over 1780 applicants. Applicants who have waited years for an opportunity to fund critical changes in women’s health.Equalizing funding will take much more than a one time $100M to even make a dent in the vast array of health care challenges that impact women in a way that they don’t impact men. There is so much work to do- but I am grateful for the changes I see happening and maybe with a woman in the white house, that will begin to pave the way to righting the inequality that has defined women’s health.
SOURCE:
https://theconversation.com/gender-bias-in-medicine-and-medical-research-is-still-putting-womens-health-at-risk-156495
