Uterine conditions affect the health and quality of life of millions of women in America – but their causes, cures, and true prevalence is often unknown due to a lack of research in uterine health.
To bring attention to these research and care gaps and help support individuals impacted by uterine health conditions, the Society for Women’s Health (SWHR) has added uterine health to the Women’s Health Equity Initiative campaign this fall, coinciding with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) Awareness Month, Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month, Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, and Pain Awareness Month, all taking place in September.
As part of this addition, SWHR created a uterine health fact sheet, “Uterine Health Disparities: Prevalence and Impact Across the United States,” and released a video interview with the Director of the University of Michigan Endometriosis and Pelvic Pain Clinic Dr. Sawsan As-Sanie, to highlight the health disparities and opportunities in uterine health.
Gaps in Outcomes for Uterine Health
Many uterine health conditions are characterized by irregular periods, excessive bleeding, pelvic and lower back pain, or difficulty with urination and pregnancy. Such conditions may include abnormal uterine bleeding, adenomyosis, endometriosis, gynecologic cancers, PCOS, and uterine fibroids.
The uterine health data we do have suggests that condition incidence, severity, and outcomes differ due to genetic, race and ethnicity, geography, age, economic stability, and other social and individual behaviors. For example:
- Adverse uterine health outcomes are greater for women in rural areas than in urban areas.
- African American women with uterine diseases tend to experience worse clinical outcomes than their white counterparts.
These disparities are best documented in the health literature for the conditions of uterine fibroids and endometriosis:
- Black women tend to develop fibroids at a younger age, have larger fibroids, and have fewer days between periods.
- Forty-two per 1,000 women are hospitalized annually because of fibroids, but African American women have higher rates of hospitalization, myomectomies (surgical removal of fibroids), and hysterectomies (surgical removal of the uterus) compared with white women.
- Early research suggested that endometriosis was a disease that primarily impacted white women, which more recent data is proving untrue. This gap in research has thus exacerbated disparity in care for women of color who have the disease.
All of this information and more is available in the uterine health portion of the initiative’s Health Equity Roadmap. Check out more of SWHR’s uterine health resources online, including the Uterine Fibroids Toolkit, Stigma and Endometriosis Paper, Focus on Fibroids Fact Sheet, and Endometriosis Toolkit.
Uterine Health in the Larger Women’s Health Equity Initiative
Uterine health is one of six conditions spotlighted in the Women’s Health Equity Initiative, which was launched one year ago to highlight statistics on women’s health in the United States and engage communities on solutions to improve health equity across multiple disease states, conditions, and life stages. Like uterine health, all six conditions in the initiative disproportionately or exclusively affect women and exhibit health disparities due, in part, to the lack of research, funding, and awareness for them across the health care ecosystem:
- Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias disproportionately affect women, with women nearly two times more likely to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease than men.
- Osteoporosis disproportionately affects women, impacting one in five women aged 50 and older, compared to just one in 20 in men over 50.
- Of the 1.5 million Americans with lupus, 90% are women aged 15 to 44.
- The United States has the highest rate of maternal deaths among developed nations, with about 700 women dying each year.
- Among the women who report vasomotor symptoms during the menopause transition, white women experience hot flashes for around 6.5 years, while Hispanic women experience them at 8.9 years, and African American at 10 years; data show that Native American women may experience the worst perimenopausal hot flashes, though additional data is needed.
In the future, SWHR will add conditions to the Women’s Health Equity Initiative and continues to seek sponsors and health care stakeholders interested in supporting SWHR’s health equity work. Please reach out to development@swhr.org to learn about partnering on this work.