It didn’t have to take a pandemic to show us the cracks in our healthcare system—the evidence was all around for anyone who was looking closely. Costs are high, insurance can be challenging to navigate, doctors and nurses are overworked and, well, the list goes on.
But if you ask us—a pair of practicing urologists with a deep interest in medical research—we’ll tell you that there’s an even more basic problem, something that affects tens of millions of patients and will continue to do so, no matter how the health system is reformed.
Medical research today—and as far back as you’d like to look—has been focused almost entirely on a single slice of the population: White men. If you’re a woman, and especially a woman of color, there’s a chance that you were not fully represented in research studies. In 2017, the FDA issued a report which found that less than half of all drug trials included women at all, and only 7% of those studied were African American.
That’s why we’re hoping you’ll take part in a new initiative, the Engaging and Amplifying Women’s Voices in SUI project. If you leak when you laugh, sneeze, lift, bend or move around, we want to—no, we need to—hear from you. This is your chance let us know what your biggest challenges, concerns and hopes are when it comes to bladder leakage and health care. We want to learn what your experience has been like getting treatment, what therapies have been suggested to you and how they actually worked out. Your wisdom and insight will literally help direct what research projects get done in the decades ahead.
Please take this opportunity to complete our survey by clicking here—it only takes a few minutes, and you’ll be making a real, lasting contribution to the health and welfare of millions and millions of women of color who have for far too long been overlooked and underappreciated.
