While looking at the most recent news stories concerning women's health by searching “women's health” in google news on August 11, 2016, a vast majority of the articles were concerning sex, having babies, weight, and relationships with men. They were mainly about sex positions and zika virus, which may be important, but aren't very representative of all the issues that are important in women's health today. There were a couple particular stories that were more complex though looking at the intersectionality of women's health with other social identities, such as race and transgender issues. One particular article was about the impact of racism on mental health in the magazine website, Women's Health.
This Women's Health article appeared to be inspired by the
Black Lives Matter movement and the mental trauma of police violence and
brutality. A majority of their website article was trying to explain a
scientific article in the American Journal of Public Health concerning the
mental health risks of daily racial discrimination, and they actually did a
fair job of explaining the health, science, and research components. The study
actually took place in the UK, but there were a lot of findings and lessons
that could be transferable to America. It was a short internet article, but at
the end of their discussion of the research, they gave a call to action and
steps to address discrimination and racism in America. These included
contacting elected officials to keep them accountable concerning race and law
enforcement, becoming an educated voter about were candidates stand on these
issues, and volunteering for or donating to specific community organizations
that have a history of working towards racial equality.
It was a good example of explaining scientific evidence to a
broad audience including both those that may or may not be experiencing racism
themselves as well as connecting it to action. This is something academia often
lacks. Publishing articles in scientific journals doesn't mean the American
people or the world will learn or benefit from hard scientific work or that
social action and policy change will occur. The media plays an important role,
but these days they are more interested in entertaining than educating or
seeking truth. Explaining science isn't always the most entertaining news, and
if they do report scientific findings, they often report on poorly done studies
with one sentence headline conclusions unsupported by the findings. Academia
has a greater responsibility (actually it should be their main responsibility)
to educate the public with quality scientific evidence in a way that different
education levels can interpret and appreciate across social identities as well
as political and cultural views. Academia must also ensure that their research
leads to actual social and policy change as well. These issues concerning the
media, academia, and the education system are a part of the problem resulting in
our current political climate and presidential election situation.
Obviously, there is a long way for academia and the media to
go as only a few articles out of a hundred under “women's health” on google
news were about complex social, health, and scientific issues. It would be
interesting though to see if the magazine website and the researchers collaborated
on this article to ensure the conclusions were appropriate and that it was
presented in a way to be interpreted across the spectrum of society as well as
to explore how often this occurs.
Alexander Sloboda, MS 4
Women's Health Pathway
