By Daniel DeNoon, WebMD
Medical News Reviewed by Michael Smith, MD, on Friday, May
07, 2004
May 7, 2004 – An American woman’s health may hang on where she lives.
Some states do very little for women’s health, while some do a barely adequate job, according to a state-by-state analysis from the National Women’s Law Center and Oregon Health & Science University.
“The outlook for women’s health is grim and nowhere near approaching the nation’s goals for 2010 set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” Michelle Berlin, MD, MPH, of OHSU says in a news release. “Failing to meet these goals undermines not only the health and well-being of women, but the well-being of our country as well.”
The rankings are based on whether states have adopted 67 “key women’s health policies.” The only one of these met by all the states is Medicaid coverage for breast and cervical cancer. Only three states – New York, California, and Rhode Island – met more than half of these policy goals. Idaho, South Dakota, and Mississippi met the fewest.
State-by-State Rankings on Women’s Health Here are the state-by-state rankings, in rank order:
Major components of the rankings are based on:
“F” grades on the groups’ national report card goes to six states: Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas.
“Satisfactory minus” grades – meaning not quite satisfactory but not unsatisfactory – go to eight states: Minnesota, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Colorado, and Utah.
All other states get an “unsatisfactory” rating.
The report shows that while many states made gains in some areas, they offset these gains by weakening women’s health in other areas.
SOURCES: Making the Grade on Women’s Health: A National and State-by-State Report Card, National Women’s Law Center and Oregon Health & Science University, 2004. News release, National Women’s Law Center.
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