NEWS

Women’s health day to focus on media coverage, policy

By LANITA WITHERS
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Following a year of highly publicized announcements about hormone replacement therapy and mammography research, the media’s role in public understanding of women’s health issues will be the topic of the 2003 Women’s Health Research Day.

"Prevention Research, Policy and the Press" is the theme of the conference, sponsored by the N.C. Program for Women’s Health Research and the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Faculty Development Program, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 19 at the Carolina Club in the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on Stadium Drive. The program is free to the public; however, registration is required. For further information or to register, click on www.pwhr.unc.edu/fourthwhrd.html.

Among the speakers will be Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Carmen Hooker Odom, secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

Scheduled events include:

· Presentations from BIRCWH faculty and scholars, 9:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Topics will cover "The BIRCWH Program – A Multidisciplinary Initiative to Support the Growth and Development of Women’s Health Research," "The Problem with Individual Risk," "Understanding Bone Remodeling During Lactation," "Obesity and the Environment: the Transition to Adulthood" and "Body Mass Index Charting: Useful Yet Underused in the Pediatric Setting."

· An address by Hooker Odom, 1 p.m. Appointed in January 2001, Hooker Odom is the former co-chairwoman of the N.C. Health Care Reform Commission and has spent her professional career in the health-care field.

· Women’s Health: 21^st Century Challenges," the keynote address by Clancy, 1:45 p.m. Clancy has headed the agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human "Services, since March 2002. Clancy is a general internist and health services researcher in women’s health, primary care, access to care and impact of financial incentives on physician’s decisions. She has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals, and her work has been recognized with an award from the Women’s Caucus of the American Public Health Association.

· Panel discussion on prevention research, policy and the media, 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. The panel will include medical journalists and professionals in the fields of medical research and health policies.

· "New Techniques in Cervical Cancer Screening," lecture by Dr. Manuel Penalver, 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Penalver is the Sylvester professor and chairman of the University of Miami department of obstetrics and gynecology and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

Women’s Health Research Day, which began in 2000, has featured topics in previous years such as "Strategies for Advancing Women’s Health Research," "On the Horizon: Contraception and Contraceptive Research" and "Priorities for Women’s Health Research."

The N.C. Program for Women’s Health Research provides research services to women’s health investigators to make available the best possible research and improve the health of women. The program was founded in March 2000 as a joint effort of the UNC schools of medicine and public health and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.

"Women’s Health Research Day provides an opportunity to highlight the reach of women’s health issues," said Dr. Katherine Hartmann, co-director of the N.C. Program for Women’s Health Research. "The more we foster alliances of experts, across this campus, this state and the nation, the more successful our care of women will be."

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(Withers is a senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication from Reidsville.)

Contact: Kerrie Kurgat, (919) 843-3394