Women play a vital role in the health of our nation - as members of service professions, personal caregivers, mothers, partners, leaders, teachers, health care professionals, and more. Women primarily make the health care decisions for their families, and women seek medical care more often than do men. Now, more than ever, women are taking an interest in national health issues, as well as self-care. They want to partner with their health care providers to make decisions, prevent, and jointly care for health problems. Women also are taking advantage of many 21st century technologies like the Internet to search for health information, join support groups, and communicate with their health care providers.

We understand women's needs for quick, trustworthy information. Knowledge is key to them making better, more informed decisions about their and their families' health. As a busy health care professional, every day you are faced with the task of helping meet these needs and providing quality medical care to your patients.

Now, you can use the valuable resources and tools in this section of our web site to strengthen your link to the world of women's health. You can:

• empower your female patients with helpful, reliable information
• learn more about caring for yourself as a busy health care professional
• keep handy informational tools at your fingertips, like links to medical dictionaries and women-specific medical journals
• keep in touch with women-specific health conferences and events, and with what other health care professionals are saying about their professions and women's health
• learn about aspects of women's health that you may not already be involved in, like global women's health concerns or public health initiatives.

 
This month's article, Substance Abuse and Women comes from Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph.D. with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University

Substance abuse is the number one preventable cause of death, disease and disability in our nation. And it is one of the most serious--but often neglected--women's health issues in the US today. Tobacco, alcohol and/or drugs are implicated in the three leading causes of death in women; heart disease, stroke and cancer. Each year, breast cancer kills more than 46,000 women while smoking, drinking and drug abuse are responsible for approximately 200,000 preventable deaths in women.

Read the rest of this month's article...