The first, published online by the journal Pediatrics, finds that a startling percentage of low-income, urban mothers show symptoms of postpartum depression. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center screened 198 mothers of children between the ages of 2 weeks and 14 months who brought their children for checkups at the center’s outpatient pediatric clinic. More than half of those mothers — 56 percent — met the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of some degree of depression.

Postpartum depression is thought to affect 14 percent of new mothers in the United States, and while it is known to be higher in low-income populations, these numbers surprised researchers.

The second study cited in the article looked at acupuncture as a treatment for depression with pregant women:

Researchers at Stanford University tested alternative treatments and antidepressants for pregnant women and found that acupuncture specifically designed to treat depression is a potential substitute. Sixty-three percent of women who received that treatment responded well, compared with only 44 percent who received massage therapy or acupuncture that was not specifically designed for depression.

Link to the original New York Times Article:

Women who have been raped have much more difficulty in childbirth than their peers who have never suffered sexual abuse or violence, a new study shows.

“The challenging part seems to be in the second stage, when the baby is to descend and the woman should start pushing,” Dr Lotte Halvorsen of the University Hospital of North Norway, who helped conduct the study, told Reuters Health in an email.

“A possible explanation may be that the physical pain when the baby is descending activates flashbacks of the rape, and the resistance to the traumatic experience,” the researcher said.

Based on the findings, she adds, doctors, midwives and nurses helping women in labour and delivery need to know if that woman has a history of rape, so that they can assist her during labour without re-traumatising her. “A previous rape is a shameful, and therefore often a silent and unprocessed, negative experience in life that women do not bring up themselves,” she added.

In 2008, there were more than 1.5 million total cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea reported to CDC — making them the two most commonly reported infectious diseases in the United States. Adolescent girls and young women are especially hard hit by these two diseases. The largest number of reported cases of both chlamydia and gonorrhea in 2008 was among girls between 15 and 19 years of age, followed closely by young women 20 to 24 years of age. This likely reflects a combination of factors, including biological differences that place females at greater risk for STDs than males, as well as higher STD screening rates among young women.

Syphilis — a disease once on the verge of elimination — began re-emerging as a public health threat in 2001. This is primarily because of a resurgence of the disease among men who have sex with men (MSM), though cases among women have also been increasing in recent years.
STDs and Infertility

Untreated STDs can lead to serious long-term health consequences, especially for adolescent girls and young women. CDC estimates that undiagnosed and untreated STDs cause at least 24,000 women in the United States each year to become infertile.3

Expanded access to STD prevention services, screening, and treatment is urgently needed to reduce the toll of STDs and protect the health of millions of Americans.
Racial Disparities

Racial minorities continue to face severe disparities across all three reportable STDs. While racial disparities persist overall, African-Americans, especially young African-American women, are the most heavily affected. Young African-American women face significantly higher rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea than any other group, while the highest rates of syphilis are among African-American men.

Link to PDF Factsheet

We also found an interesting blog post at Womenstake.org about people are taking action in states where there are no laws that prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to domestic violence survivors:

Five of the 8 jurisdictions that do not explicitly prohibit health insurance discrimination based on domestic violence have made efforts to address this problem:

* In October 2009, the District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking issued a bulletin warning insurers not to use domestic violence as a factor when issuing health insurance policies.
* In September 2009, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chancy called upon the state legislature to take action banning discrimination against survivors of domestic violence.

* In North Carolina, Insurance Commissioner, Wayne Goodwin, stated that he will ask the legislature to clarify current state law and that he will implement new administrative rules to prohibit insurers from discriminating against domestic violence survivors in the individual market. North Carolina state law already prohibits such discrimination in group plans.
* In North Dakota, Insurance Commissioner, Adam Hamm and Governor John Hoeven are currently working to change the present policy in their state.
* Finally, in Oklahoma, state Senator Jim Wilson intends to introduce SB 1251, which would prohibit any insurance plan issued or renewed on or after November 1, 2010, from considering domestic abuse as a pre-existing condition.
* It is also noteworthy that, In April 2009, Arkansas passed a law expressly prohibiting health insurance companies from using a woman’s status as a domestic violence to deny coverage.

The original Womenstake.org blog post also posted a helpful link for you to contact your congressional representative.

Take Action

Washington, D.C., officials are planning to make testing for sexually transmitted infections available at all public high schools in the coming school year, adding D.C. to a growing list of cities that test students for STIs….

he new program requires all students to attend a lecture about STIs, after which they are escorted into restroom areas in groups of 15 to 20. They are then given paper bags with urine collection cups and go into the stalls, at which point they can decide whether to provide a sample. All students return the paper bags, regardless of whether they provided samples. Students give a password and can call a week later to receive their confidential results and, if necessary, treatment at the school or an STI clinic, which is paid for by the city. The district first offered the program two years ago at two charter schools, and eight high schools were included during the past school year.

Also from The Women’s Health Report, news from Boston:

Boston’s health agency on Tuesday is scheduled to launch a safer-sex campaign that reaches out to teenagers through Web sites such as Facebook and YouTube, the Boston Globe reports. The campaign was created in response to rising rates of sexually transmitted infections among young people in the city, according to the Globe. The $100,000 campaign originally was intended to address communicable diseases in general. However, experts noticed the increase in STI cases among teenagers and decided to spend all the funding on the campaign targeting STIs.

Adult female sexual violence survivors are more likely than other women to engage in unsafe sex practices, including having multiple sex partners, not negotiating condom use, having sex with men who do not use condoms, trading sex for money/drugs, and having sex with an HIV-infected partner. Theorists propose that the links between sexual violence and unsafe sex behaviors are due to the trauma of sexual victimization; however, longitudinal research on this topic would help to illuminate ties between sexual violence and unsafe sex behaviors

Sexual Violence Against Women: Impact on High-Risk Health Behaviors and Reproductive Health