Disparities in Female-Oriented Healthcare and Medical Research

Public project summary

There is a direct correlation between mental health and birth control usage, yet research in this field is vastly underfunded and minimized because it pertains to female health. The field of health is - and has been for centuries - dominated by men; research for ailments, diseases and medicine disproportionately gives precedence to men, proffering a lack of proper treatment for women. Birth control provides a potential remedy to a series of health affairs for women: mental (PTSD, depression, anxiety), reproductive, and even physical (acne, PMS, PMDD, weight loss/gain), etc. As hormone cycles perpetually affect women’s health, understanding and encouraging research into women’s physiology and endocrinology is of the utmost importance. An incorrect or improper understanding of women’s health brings forth serious, prospective risks and harm towards half of the population’s well-being. This advanced research project illustrates the disparities of treatment in medicine between the sexes and the collective, discriminatory regard towards female health. This project will illuminate these issues through the process of analyzing statistical and qualitative data provided by medical health professionals and will execute a survey for women and female high school students in the Bay Area who have experienced treatment with birth control.