Veterans’ column: VA hospitals doing more for women’s health
A special supplement of the journal Women’s Health Issues, published July 13, details the growth and diversity of women’s health research by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in recent years.
Its publication coincides with the VA recognizing July as Women Veterans Month.
“VA has had a longstanding commitment to improving women’s health,” VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said in a news release. “This supplement shows the tremendous progress we’ve made by making that commitment to women veterans a top priority across the department.”
Titled “Health and Health Care of Women Veterans and Women in the Military: Research Informing Evidence-based Practice and Policy,” the supplement features commentaries examining the role, history, and future of women’s health research.
In an opening commentary, Elizabeth Yano, Ph.D., and Dr. Susan Frayne discuss the heightened focus on health-services research, with more articles published between 2004 and 2008, the first four years after the VA Office of Research and Development established its women’s health agenda, than in the previous 25 years combined.
The supplement also includes 18 peer-reviewed research articles addressing the changing demographics and demands of VA health care presented by the recent surge of women veterans into the VA system.
Among the topics addressed are: gender differences and disparities in care; mental health, including military sexual trauma and substance abuse; post-deployment health, including post-traumatic stress disorder; quality and delivery of care; and special populations, including homeless women veterans and those with traumatic brain injuries.
“With women expected to make up 10 percent of the veteran population by 2018,” said Dr. Robert A. Petzel, VA undersecretary for health, “our goal of excellence in health care for all of our nation’s veterans makes it imperative that we prepare now to meet future demands.”
Women’s Health Issues is a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. The journal focuses on applied research in women’s health care and policy issues.
Big step forward for women’s health
Adequate health insurance coverage has too long been out of reach for many women. Their health—and often the health of their families—has suffered.
That’s why the recommendations made last week by the medical and scientific experts convened by the Institute of Medicine are a major step forward for women. They help address some of the long-standing discriminatory practices and barriers women have faced in the health care system.
The experts determined that the full range of FDA-approved contraception, yearly well-woman visits, support for breast feeding, counseling for sexually transmitted infections, and screening and counseling for domestic violence are essential women’s preventive health services and should be covered by health insurers with no co-pays.
The Affordable Care Act requires all new health insurance plans to cover a list of preventive health services, as identified by the Department of Health & Human Services, and provide them with no out-of-pocket expenses for women. Based on the recommendations, HHS is to determine which screenings and services will be included.
These new guidelines are historic and will go a long way to protecting and promoting women’s health.
But opponents of contraception have sounded the alarm and are likely to make political demands to undermine this protection. The Institute of Medicine, however, merely acknowledged what most of us already know: Contraception is basic, essential health care. Overwhelming majorities of women use contraception to protect their health and prevent unintended pregnancy, and we virtually all are likely to use contraception at some point in our lives.
Nearly all women aged 15-44 who have had sexual intercourse have used at least one form of contraception, according to research from the non-partisan Guttmacher Institute. Among the 43 million fertile, sexually active women who don’t now want to become pregnant, 89 percent are using contraception. It is a normal, mainstream fact of life.
There is nothing new or novel about requiring health insurers to cover contraception. For more than 10 years, civil rights laws have made explicit that employers who provide health insurance plans that cover other preventive health care and prescription drugs must cover contraception. Twenty-eight states now require contraceptive coverage in private plans. The Medicaid program has also long required that contraceptives be included as part of the coverage for beneficiaries.
In addition to recognizing the fact that contraceptive coverage is already standard practice in both public and private health insurance plans, the non-partisan, independent panel of experts based its determination on a review of the medical and scientific evidence about unintended pregnancy; similar recommendations by numerous health care professional groups and other organizations, as well as the federal government itself, and the effectiveness of contraceptives.
Research also shows that costs—including co-payments and other cost-sharing requirements—play a key role in the contraceptive behavior of substantial numbers of women, often leading them to use less effective methods, or pay for contraception at the expense of other essential needs.
We are confident that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will follow this expert panel’s recommendations, and stand with the millions of women who depend on affordable, comprehensive health insurance.
Quest Diagnostics to Unveil Extensions to its Women’s Health and Personalized Medicine Test Offerings at the 2011 AACC Annual Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo
Athena Diagnostics’ spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) testing menu is broadly available nationally to Quest Diagnostics’ clients for the first time
Quest Diagnostics will also present novel scientific research and host the “What’s New in Laboratory Medicine?” scientific speaker series in booth 3130
MADISON, N.J., July 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE: DGX), the world’s leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services, today announced it will unveil extensions to its women’s health and AccuType® pharmacogenetic test menus, give eight scientific presentations and host six scientific speakers during the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) annual meeting and Clinical Lab Expo, to be held in Atlanta, July 26-28, 2011 (Exhibit number 3130).
Spinal Muscular Atrophy Testing Now Available Broadly in the U.S.
The extensions to the company’s women’s health menu feature Athena Diagnostics’ spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) testing menu, believed to be the most comprehensive in the diagnostics industry. The services, which include adult-carrier screening and pre- and post-natal disease assessment testing, are now nationally available for the first time to physicians, laboratory directors and other clients of Quest Diagnostics. The offerings also position Quest Diagnostics as the only national major laboratory to provide testing services to assess SMA disease severity based on Athena’s analysis of the number of copies of an SMA-associated gene.
Athena Diagnostics, which Quest Diagnostics acquired in April 2011, is the leader in neurology diagnostics and a pioneer in SMA testing, which it has performed since 1996. Prior to the acquisition, select Quest Diagnostics’ business units had offered Athena Diagnostics’ SMA testing services in select regions only.
The SMA adult-carrier screening test detects a defective survival motor neuron (SMN) 1 gene, which determines an individual’s risk of passing SMA to offspring. The pre- and post-natal disease assessment tests identify the number of copies of the SMN2 gene, which affects disease severity.
SMA, a neuromuscular disease, is the second most common fatal autosomal-recessive disorder, with an estimated prevalence of one in 10,000 live births and an estimated carrier prevalence of about one in 40 to 60 individuals. If each parent possesses a defective SMN1 gene, there is a one in four chance their offspring will inherit the disease. SMA disease severity is affected greatly by the number of SMN2 gene copies. While many affected individuals will die by the age of two, others may live well into adulthood with significant or mild disability, in part based on SMN2 copy-number status.
With the Athena Diagnostics offering, Quest Diagnostics is now the only major national laboratory in the U.S. to provide testing services for identifying the number of SMN2 gene copies. The company’s women’s health menu also includes testing, counseling and interpretation services for aiding the detection of several developmental disorders, including cystic fibrosis, fragile X syndrome and autism spectrum disorders.
“When it comes to personal and family health, women and their physicians rightly expect their clinical laboratory to offer the comprehensive testing options, expertise and quality needed to make well-informed decisions,” said Charles M. Strom, M.D., Ph.D., senior medical director, genetics, Quest Diagnostics, and a board-certified pediatrician. “The addition of Athena’s SMA tests to Quest Diagnostics’ menu enables us to offer the broadest range of genetic women’s health testing and expert interpretative counseling services.”
AccuType Pharmacogenomic Testing Now Includes Four Services
At its exhibit, Quest Diagnostics will also showcase its AccuType family of pharmacogenomic testing services for personalizing medicine. These include two tests Quest Diagnostics launched this year: AccuType Metformin, a service designed to help physicians predict if a patient with Type II diabetes or at risk for Type II diabetes will respond to metformin, and its AccuType IL28B test, designed to aid in the prediction of response to the widely used pegylated-interferon alpha-based therapy for treating hepatitis C virus infection. The AccuType line also includes tests introduced in recent years to aid in predicting patient response to the blood thinners clopidogrel (Plavix®) and warfarin.
Scientific Presentations and Speakers
In addition, the company’s medical experts will give eight poster presentations providing novel data on vitamin D by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS), free T4 method comparison, and CYPC219 allele prevalence by ethnicity. As part of the company’s “What’s New in Laboratory Medicine?” in-booth speaker series, Quest Diagnostics scientists and external academic and other experts will address topics of interest in clinical and laboratory medicine, including genetics and heart disease, vitamin D, endocrine disorders, infectious disease and prescription drug monitoring.
For a complete list of poster presentations and the speaker series agenda, please visit: QuestDiagnostics.com/2011AACC.
About Quest Diagnostics
Quest Diagnostics is the world’s leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services that patients and doctors need to make better healthcare decisions. The company offers the broadest access to diagnostic testing services through its network of laboratories and patient service centers, and provides interpretive consultation through its extensive medical and scientific staff. Quest Diagnostics is a pioneer in developing innovative diagnostic tests and advanced healthcare information technology solutions that help improve patient care.