November 18, 2010
Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford appeared on Oprah’s show this week…the first time they appeared together. And Barbra talked about her new book, My passion for design. She told us all about how some of the proceeds will be used for women’s heart health. She is supporting Cedars-Sinai Women’s Heart Center. You can read more about the center at http://www.discoveringforlife.org/whc.
Barbra asked Oprah if she realized that more women die from heart disease than cancer, and Oprah said, “yes…” with a smile and a comment about how it has been discussed on her show before. Barbra said it was news to her and that the idea that there is so little research that has been done with women about this issue was something she wants to change.
I was thus reminded of the past several posts in which this issue has been discussed and that we need to do a better job of communicating about the status of health science. More women need to understand that too few of us participate in medical research. Barbra Streisand is helping to increase awareness by talking about this reality.
But taking it one step further, even when research has been funded and could include women, women may not participate because families and jobs make it seem nearly impossible to do so. We need our families and our employers to support our participation. We need to ask them to support our participation. If not us, who will do it?
I have participated in clinical trials a couple of times as I describe in my book, ‘Talking about health’. I was asked to participate in research relating to the use of surgery for endometriosis. I felt that I could not say ‘no’ when I am always promoting participation to others and when I am always asking people to participate in my own research. But I had some questions and some concerns. I wanted to know how my privacy would be protected when researchers were looking at my case and seeing the laser treatment being used for my endometriosis.
I asked questions about my concerns. I learned that the recorded images would be of the internal activities, so my body as I know it was not going to appear on anyone’s screen. That was reassuring to me. I had several other questions as well, and asking them made me more comfortable with the idea of participating. In fact, now when I have a diagnosis that is a chronic condition, I ask if there are any reseach studies going on that I might be able to participate in. I hope you might consider talking to your doctors about medical research and how you might be involved as well…
