Self-care involves developing the competence to do for oneself and one’s family and friends many of the things which we now rely on medical professionals to do. Most importantly, it means developing the capacity to diagnose common health problems and to deal with them effectively without going to a doctor and without...
Tag - women’s health
On October 20 over 200 angry women and men from the community and the coalition packed the regularly scheduled County Board meeting to demand that Dunne’s order be reversed. Although the issue of abortion cutbacks was originally not even on the meeting’s agenda, members of the pro-choice coalition forced the Board to...
Thus far, the movement against infant formula has mostly focused rather narrowly on the health or promotional aspects of what has come to be known as the great "bottle baby" scandal. This growing movement has already generated considerable literature on the marketing, nutritional, disease, and micro-economic issues...
The nine sessions of the conference were each devoted to one topic. Following the format of the conference, the two volumes are divided into nine sections, each of which consists of short formal papers, responses to those papers and discussions. The first volume, Birth Control and Controlling Birth, covers the...
The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, authors of the book Our Bodies, Ourselves, is just such a model. The collective has, in the last ten years, helped to radically change the consciousness of women of all classes about their bodies and their health, and has empowered women to take action for their health in...
On October 20, 1980, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a regulation requiring warning labels on all tampon packages, and notices on shelves in the market place where tampons are sold. Unfortunately they have not made it mandatory. The voluntary efforts of the manufacturers in warning the public on the hazards...
There is much more profit in finding a cure for cancer than in preventing the disease. Industry tries to manipulate cancer prevention into a case of the environmentalists against the workers; just as nuclear power, uranium mining, automobile emissions standards, and too many others have been previously manipulated...
The scope of sexual harassment is staggering. It ranges from propositions and sexual innuendo to rape. It is just as pervasive in universities as in blue collar jobs, in police forces as in acting schools, in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as in unions The Women’s Legal Defense Fund estimates that “more...
It is intolerable that AID, whose programs are financed by tax dollars, has continued to ignore the wishes expressed by African and Middle Eastern Health Departments, and that they have refused to collaborate in international actions sponsored by WHO and UNICEF. The unwillingness of AID and other national and...
How do health activists institute change in the medical system? A problem commonly faced by them is whether to work to improve a basically sexist and oppressive medical care system or to create their own structures. Does it make sense to institute short range reforms or to struggle for long term radical change? By...