Although heart disease is the leading cause of death among women in the United States, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute notes that healthcare providers throughout the country are less likely to order tests to diagnose heart disease when examining female patients, while a study preprint on MedRxiv suggests that the timeline between seeking care and receiving a formal diagnosis is longer for women across multiple categories than for their male peers. As these disparities in healthcare continue to devastate women and their families, healthcare advocacy groups have been building networks of patient education and legal support aimed at empowering women to more effectively lobby for their own heart health, in doctors’ offices and beyond. At Erin Marshall Law, we are proud to support healthcare advocacy for women, from navigating maternity care to securing prompt, professional treatment for common conditions that affect people of all races and genders. Call our New Mexico office today at 505-218-9949 to set up an appointment to discuss your concerns.
Healthcare Advocacy for Women’s Heart Health
Often healthcare advocacy for women focuses on reproductive issues: contraception, maternity care, diagnosis and treatment of sex-specific conditions like uterine fibroids. All of these issues are in fact important – but women are also human beings with hearts and lungs and organs that have little or nothing to do with conceiving or carrying a child. A laser focus on maternity and reproductive care can easily obscure the reality that cardiovascular disease remains the foremost cause of death for both men and women.
As Go Red for Women notes, however, many women – and in some cases their healthcare providers – are used to thinking of heart disease as a condition (or set of conditions) primarily affecting older men. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute explains that doctors are less likely to order diagnostic tests like electrocardiograms for female patients than when treating men who present with similar symptoms. While firms like Erin Marshall Law are working to ensure legal support for women failed by healthcare inertia, empowering women to advocate for themselves in healthcare settings through high-quality information regarding heart health and treatment options continues to be essential in promoting positive change.
Empowering Women: Healthcare Advocacy and Patient Education
Some of the most significant achievements in healthcare advocacy for women have come from patient education and community outreach. Women who know the signs and symptoms of potentially deadly conditions such as heart disease, and who are aware of their personal risk factors, enjoy an enhanced ability to advocate for themselves and their own care and treatment, including in clinical settings where access to timely external resources may be limited. Both government agencies, such as the New Mexico Department of Health, and non-governmental not-for-profit organizations, such as Go Red for Women, offer educational resources aimed at ensuring female patients have the information they need to manage their own heart health.
Empowering Women Through Legal Support
Often, when someone hears the term legal support, they may think primarily of legislative initiatives – from lobbying elected officials to support a cause, to drafting the legislation for review by a committee, to shepherding these drafts through revision to secure their passage into law. This kind of legal support is of course highly impactful in establishing public health policies, outreach programs, and other tools designed to promote women’s heart health. However, there is also another kind of support that far too many female patients find themselves needing: the legal support to carry their case to court when they have been failed by the very medical professionals who should have cared for them.
While medical malpractice cases arise in all areas of healthcare and can affect patients of any gender, the tragic reality is that women are more likely to be misdiagnosed than men. They are also more likely to have their treatment delayed due to a failure to perform timely diagnostics – even for conditions, including heart disease, that have a high prevalence in both sexes. At Erin Marshall Law, we are passionate about healthcare advocacy for women in part because our work in malpractice cases so often brings us into contact with women whose serious healthcare concerns have been dismissed by doctors, nurses, and other professionals who owed their patients a duty of care. As frustrating as it is to constantly see the evidence of medical negligence in women’s treatment, those daily reminders also affirm the value of the opportunity we often have to help exhausted patients approach the legal process of securing medical injury compensation with confidence.
Talk With an Advocate for Women’s Heart Health
Often an important part of healthcare advocacy for women lies in understanding where the woman is coming from and what difficulties lie in her path to safe, effective treatment. If you are struggling to navigate compensation for medical injury as a woman in New Mexico, you should know that there are resources available to you. If you are trying to secure diagnosis and treatment for symptoms that continue to interrupt your daily life and raise concerns about your heart health, you may benefit from knowledgeable legal support. The entire team at Erin Marshall Law maintains a deep commitment to empowering women to take charge of their healthcare journeys. Contact our office today to learn more. Call us in Albuquerque at 505-218-9949.
