Hadassah: A Sisterhood of Healers

Almost a century ago, Henrietta Szold began a study group in NYC to promote the Zionist ideal through education and public health initiatives. I am sure she never could have imagined that more than 250,000 women worldwide would now make up a “network of dedicated volunteers, men and women of all faiths and nationalities, founded on the principle that advancement and cooperation in medicine and science transcend politics, religion, and national boundaries.”

I am proud to be a life member of Hadassah. Two of their hospitals were nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. It is the only Jewish organization ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Quite an accomplishment for this group of women!

March has been designated Women’s History Month. Buffalo Hadassah has an impressive line-up of activities to mark their calendar. I have the honor of kicking off the month with a talk which I have entitled “The Gender Gap in Healthcare.”

I cannot claim to be the first to describe this gap. In fact, although a feminist from my high school years, I really didn’t notice it until I started doing research into gender differences in healthcare providers. Clearly, there was more to gender differences in medicine than the unfair and unequal treatment of women physicians and surgeons, like me.

I came across articles about how women have “atypical” pain heralding the onset of their heart attack. Why is our pain “atypical” and the pain from a man’s heart described as “typical”. And how many of us are not diagnosed until three, four or five trips to the emergency department when they are finally whisked off to have their angiogram and emergency heart surgery? The myriad of other diagnoses is quite incredible (you have to come to the lecture to find out).

I came across research about how many women’s diseases are relegated to a category not too fondly called “It’s All in Your Head.” Many of these patients, overwhelmingly women, finally are diagnosed with difficult to diagnose or rare diseases. Frustrated and debilitated, many are assigned mental illness diagnoses, which, by the time they receive the proper diagnosis and treatment, have actually developed in response to the non-response to their medical concerns.

I came across articles in the medical literature, that despite regulations and laws (rarely enforced), medical research is carried out and published with less than optimal (and often no) data that would elucidate how a specific, common disease manifests in a woman and how that woman needs to be treated.

I hope to educate anyone who comes to my lecture on Thursday, March 4 at 7:30 pm at the Jewish Community Center (Benderson Building). I hope that by bringing awareness to every woman, that at least one person will be helped.

And I hope that the women of Hadassah think about changing their mission statement and their good works to include the principle that “advancement and cooperation in medicine and science transcend politics, religion, gender, and national boundaries”. After all, if we women don’t work to overcome these medical disadvantages, who will?