Media help, hinder women's health

Susan F. Wood was driving home after resigning as the top Food and Drug Administration official for women's health when she heard something surprising on the radio—the news of her resignation.

Former Food and Drug Administration Assistant Commissioner for Women's Health Susan F. Wood was surprised her August resignation became such a big national news story. (Photo by Steve Kuzma)

She hadn't expected to be the subject of national news coverage, but given the trigger for her resignation, perhaps it is not surprising. Wood left when the agency delayed making a decision about over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive, in spite of scientific recommendations to approve it. The delay effectively was a way of "saying no without saying no," Wood said Nov. 7 in her keynote speech at Women's Health: The Press and Public Policy, a discussion presented by the Knight-Wallace Fellows Program.

"Women's health is so much broader than reproductive health. But sadly, it's so often reproductive health issues that catch the fire," she said. The ideal, she said, would be for science to drive the decision-making related to health issues.

The event, the ninth organized by the Knight-Wallace Fellows Program, was sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation with support from the Women's Health Program at the U-M Health System.

The 11 speakers engaged in spirited discussions of topics ranging from the need for mammograms to hormone replacement therapy, and from the portrayal of women worldwide in the media to the myriad ways in which women obtain information about health.

The speakers included:

Dr. Vivian W. Pinn, director of the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health, who noted some instances when the media are helpful at getting information to women "so the women can make informed decisions" about their health care;

Gina Kolata, science writer for The New York Times, who said some ways of improving medical journalism would be for reporters to learn more about the issues and to ask better, more informed questions;

Dr. Kimberlydawn Wisdom, surgeon general of Michigan, who detailed some of the efforts the state is making to ensure that residents are healthier by the year 2010;

Joanne Silberner, health policy correspondent for National Public Radio, who discussed why some issues tend to get over-covered and others are under-covered in the news media;

Myrna Blyth, author of "Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America" and former editor-in-chief of Ladies' Home Journal, who dissected the types of stories covered by the media, such as articles indicating every woman in the United States suffers from stress;

Frances M. Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition and a breast cancer survivor, who said more detailed and nuanced information should be presented to women because some women make wrong decisions based on "sound bite information";

Cynthia A. Pearson, executive director of the National Women's Health Network and lead author of "The Truth About Hormone Replacement Therapy," who said women need media coverage of issues that are not part of products that are being marketed to people by companies with a financial stake;

Dianne Hales, author of "An Invitation to Health," who noted "sometimes the questions are more important than the answers," and said that one of her goals when writing medical textbooks is to empower students to ask the right questions about health issues;

Joann Ellison Rodgers, author of "Sex: A Natural History" and director of media relations at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, who said the need for more involvement of women in clinical trials continues, and that key developments in genomics and proteomics as they relate to women's health are on the horizon;

Marcia C. Inhorn, professor of health behavior and health education at the School of Public Health, director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, and professor of women's studies and anthropology, who said the coverage of women's health on the global scale too often creates the image of women as "pathetic victims."