fbpx
Connect with us

Kaiser Health News

Mississippi Lacks Black Doctors, Even as Lawmakers Increasingly Target Diversity Programs

Published

on

Lauren Sausser
Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

JACKSON, Miss. — Jerrian Reedy was 9 when his father was admitted to the hospital in Hattiesburg, about two hours northeast of New Orleans, after sustaining three gunshot wounds. Reedy recalled visiting his dad in the intensive care unit that summer in 2009, even though children weren't typically permitted in that part of the hospital.

“Just seeing him laid up in bed, in a hospital bed, it was traumatizing, to say the least,” Reedy said.

His father died within a week of being admitted, in the middle of a nine-month span when Reedy also lost an aunt and a grandmother. “They say death comes in threes,” he said.

Advertisement

That chain of prompted him to pursue a career in medicine, one that might help him spare other children from losing loved ones too soon.

Fifteen years later, Reedy has completed his first year at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine — a remarkable feat, and not only because his career path was born of grief and trauma. Reedy is among a small share of Black medical school students in a state where nearly 4 in 10 people — but only 1 in 10 doctors — identify as Black or African American. Of the 660 medical school students enrolled in the same four-year program as Reedy, 82 students, or about 12%, are Black.

Medical schools around the country are trying to recruit Black, Hispanic, and Native American students, all of whom remain disproportionately underrepresented in the field of medicine. Research has shown that patients of color prefer seeing doctors of their own race – and some studies have shown health outcomes are better for Black patients seeing Black doctors.

But a recent swell of Republican opposition threatens to upend those efforts, school administrators say, and could exacerbate deep health disparities already experienced by people of color.

Advertisement

Since 2023 — the year the Supreme Court voted to outlaw affirmative action in higher education — more than two dozen states, including Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas, have introduced or passed laws to restrict or ban diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

“I don't expect this movement of anti-DEI legislation to slow down or stop at all,” said Anton Gunn, a health care consultant and former head of the Office of External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “And it likely will exacerbate if Donald Trump gets the opportunity to be president of the United States again.”

Diversity Programs Face Pushback

In 2023, Florida and Texas became the first states to pass laws that banned DEI efforts in higher education. Several other states, including Idaho, North Carolina, and Wyoming, passed laws targeting such programs this year.

Advertisement

In Mississippi, state Rep. Becky Currie and state Sen. Angela Burks Hill, both Republicans, introduced separate bills that would have restricted how colleges and universities could spend money on DEI initiatives. Both bills died in legislative committees and were not brought before the 2024 legislature for a vote.

In a statement, Hill said that Mississippi needs more doctors of all kinds, not just more Black doctors, and that she thinks money spent on DEI salaries and programs should be reallocated to initiatives benefiting all students.

“Qualifications should determine who gets into medical school not color or socioeconomic status,” she said. “Can't we just be happy with more highly qualified doctors no matter their skin color? I thought a color blind society was the goal.”

Nationally, the movement to ban DEI programs has broad conservative support.

Advertisement

Jay Greene, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said he believes diversity programs “fail for a hundred reasons.” He cited research he conducted with a conservative medical advocacy group called Do No Harm refuting the premise that access to Black doctors improves health outcomes among Black patients.

“That doesn't mean there's no potential for having greater diversity in the doctor workforce,” Greene said. Having more Black doctors, for example, might encourage more Black children to consider a career in health care, he said. “But that benefit is not health outcomes.”

Meanwhile, school administrators are closely watching the progress of such laws.

In March, the University of Florida eliminated all DEI programs and terminated jobs related to those efforts. In Alabama, lawyers and school leaders are grappling with a bill signed the same month by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey that bans DEI programs in public schools, state agencies, and universities starting Oct. 1.

Advertisement

“We have to be very, very careful,” said Richard deShazo, who teaches at the University of Alabama's Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine in Birmingham and used to chair a committee that raised money for Black medical school students.

“You cannot raise money for Black kids. You have to raise money for medical students,” he said.

A Bitter History

A shortage of Black doctors isn't unique to Mississippi. The same story could be told in many other places, especially across the South, where more than half of all Black Americans live and where health outcomes regularly rank among the worst in the United States.

Advertisement

But a look at Mississippi, one of the unhealthiest states in the country, shows how the roots of systemic racism continue to shape the nation's health care workforce.

“A lot of the Black physicians in the state have a bitter in their mouth about our medical school,” said Demondes Haynes, associate dean of medical school admissions at the , where he graduated in 1999 as one of four Black students in his class.

An estimated 1.1 million Black people live in Mississippi, where there are fewer than 600 Black doctors. Research suggests health outcomes would improve if there were more. One study published last year in the medical journal JAMA Network Open found that life expectancy was longer among Black patients in counties with higher ratios of Black primary care physicians.

In a study based in Oakland, California, that involved more than 1,300 Black , those who were assigned a Black doctor were more likely to agree to screening tests for diabetes, cholesterol, and other health concerns, according to the findings published in 2018 by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Advertisement

“We absolutely are not saying every Black patient has to have a Black doctor,” Haynes said. But because the patient population in Mississippi is diverse, “they should at least have the right to say, ‘This is what I want,'” he added.

However, most Black patients aren't afforded that choice. Nearly two dozen of Mississippi's 82 counties have no Black doctors, while four counties claim no doctors at all, according to a physician workforce report published by the state in 2019.

For more than a century, dating to its founding in the mid-1800s, the University of Mississippi didn't admit Black students — and that policy applied to its medical school. In 1972, nearly 10 years after the Act of 1964 banned racial segregation in higher education, the first Black physician graduated from the medical school in Jackson. Even then, very few Black students were admitted to study medicine there each year.

Before the federal government banned the school from rejecting Black applicants because of their race, aspiring Black doctors who applied were diverted to one of the historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, such as Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Haynes said.

Advertisement

Many older Black physicians in Mississippi still remember getting those rejection letters, he said, pointing out composite photographs of physician graduates that line the walls of the medical school building in Jackson. Many of the earliest composites, dating to the 1950s, showcase classes of all-white, and almost all-male, students.

“Mississippi history — everybody remembers it,” Haynes said. “And those people who experienced it, it's hard for them.”

‘Shaping the Possibilities'

On a damp Saturday morning in mid-April, 17-year-old Dorothy Gray, a high school junior, stepped up to a hospital bed at the medical school in Jackson to intubate a mock patient in a simulation lab.

Advertisement

Gray was one of more than 100 high school and college students who attended the University of Mississippi School of Medicine's annual African American Visit Day, established more than 10 years ago to foster interest among prospective Black students. The administrators, who also host special visiting days for Hispanic and Native American students, said anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, may attend. They acknowledge that most attendees won't become doctors, and their purpose isn't to extend preferential treatment to minority applicants.

“This is about shaping the possibilities of what could be,” said Loretta Jackson-Williams, the school's vice dean for medical education. “These kids are at that precipice where they can choose to do something that's really hard for their future or they can choose an easier pathway. That choice doesn't come about overnight.”

Besides African American Visit Day, medical school leaders in Mississippi also offer a test prep program for applicants from underrepresented backgrounds who have been rejected from medical school.

The school recently identified 16 applicants, 12 of whom are Black, who were not accepted to the medical school during the last admissions cycle because their MCAT scores were too low. This year, those applicants will receive a test prep course designed by The Princeton Review — of charge — and will have a chance to meet with administrators to learn how their medical school applications might be strengthened.

Advertisement

“So many students have never had someone tell them, ‘You can do this. I believe you can do this,'” said Dan Coleman, the medical school's outreach director.

For Jerrian Reedy, who wants to become an orthopedic surgeon, the path to medical school was years in the making. He took advantage of the University of Mississippi Medical Center's PROMISE program — short for Promoting Recruitment Opportunities in Medicine with Individual Study Experiences — which assures acceptance to students from disadvantaged backgrounds who meet certain eligibility requirements, including a 3.0 GPA in their undergraduate science classes.

During his sophomore year as an undergraduate, Reedy saw an opportunity to learn more about medical school when Haynes, the assistant dean, the campus in Oxford to interview students.

“I saw some open slots, put my name down,” he said. “The rest is history.”

Advertisement

——————————
By: Lauren Sausser
Title: Mississippi Lacks Black Doctors, Even as Lawmakers Increasingly Target Diversity Programs
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org//article/black-doctor-shortage-mississippi-diversity-dei-programs/
Published Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Kaiser Health News

KFF Health News’ ‘What the Health?’: SCOTUS Term Wraps With a Bang

Published

on

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:30:00 +0000

The Host

Julie Rovner
KFF


@jrovner


Read Julie's stories.

Advertisement

Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News' weekly health policy news , “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition.

It was a busy year for health-related cases at the Supreme Court. Among other issues, the justices grappled with two cases, a separate case touching on the opioid epidemic, and a case challenging whether localities can bar homeless people from sleeping in public spaces. Also, the court struck down a decades-old precedent that could dramatically change how the federal oversees and other types of policy.

In this special episode of “What the Health?”, Sarah Somers, legal director of the National Health Program, joins KFF Health News' chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, to discuss how the justices disposed of the term's health-related cases and what those decisions could mean going forward.

A Summary of the Cases

Advertisement

On the functioning of government:

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, challenging the “Chevron doctrine” that required courts to defer in most cases to the expertise of federal agencies in interpreting laws passed by .

Corner Post Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, challenging the statute of limitations for bringing a case against a federal agency's actions.

On abortion:

Advertisement

Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, challenging the FDA's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.

Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, about whether the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requirement that hospitals participating in Medicare the care needed to stabilize a patient's overrides Idaho's near-complete abortion ban when a pregnant patient experiences a medical emergency.

On other health issues:

Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, about whether federal bankruptcy law can shield an entity from future claims without the consent of all claimants.

Advertisement

City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, about whether banning sleeping in public subjects those with no other place to sleep to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the U.S. Constitution.

Previous “What the Health?” Coverage of These Cases:

SCOTUS Ruling Strips Power From Federal Health Agencies,” June 28

SCOTUS Rejects Abortion Pill Challenge — For Now,” June 13

Advertisement

Waiting for SCOTUS,” May 30

Abortion — Again — At the Supreme Court,” April 25

The Supreme Court and the Abortion Pill,” March 28

Health Enters the Presidential Race,” Jan. 25

Advertisement

The Supreme Court vs. the Bureaucracy,” Jan. 18

Credits

Francis Ying
Audio producer

Emmarie Huetteman
Editor

To hear all our podcasts, click here.

Advertisement

And subscribe to KFF Health News' “What the Health?” on SpotifyApple PodcastsPocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

——————————
Title: KFF Health News' ‘What the Health?': SCOTUS Term Wraps With a Bang
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/podcast/what-the-health-354-supreme-court-term-wrap-july-3-2024/
Published Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:30:00 +0000

Continue Reading

Kaiser Health News

Lack of Affordability Tops Older Americans’ List of Health Care Worries

Published

on

Judith Graham
Wed, 03 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

What weighs most heavily on older adults' minds when it comes to care?

The cost of services and therapies, and their ability to pay.

“It's on our minds a whole lot because of our age and because everything keeps getting more expensive,” said Connie Colyer, 68, of Pleasureville, Kentucky. She's a retired forklift operator who has lung disease and high blood pressure. Her husband, James, 70, drives a dump truck and has a potentially dangerous irregular heart rhythm.

Advertisement

Tens of millions of seniors are similarly anxious about being able to afford health care because of its expense and rising costs for housing, food, and other essentials.

A new wave of research highlights the reach of these anxieties. When the University of Michigan's National Poll on Healthy Aging asked people 50 and older about 26 health-related issues, their top three areas of concern had to do with costs: of medical care in general, of long-term care, and of prescription drugs. More than half of 3,300 people surveyed in February and March reported being “very concerned” about these issues.

In fact, five of the top 10 issues identified as very concerning were cost-related. Beyond the top three, people cited the cost of health insurance and Medicare (52%), and the cost of dental care (45%). Financial scams and fraud came in fourth place (53% very concerned). Of much less concern were issues that receive considerable attention, social isolation, obesity, and age discrimination.

In an election year, “our poll sends a very clear message that older adults are worried about the cost of health care and will be looking to candidates to discuss what they have done or plan to do to contain those costs,” said John Ayanian, director of the University of Michigan's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Advertisement

Older adults have good reason to worry. One in 10 seniors (about 6 million people) have incomes below the federal poverty level. About 1 in 4 rely exclusively on Social Security payments, which average $1,913 a month per person.

Even though inflation has moderated since its 2022 peak, prices haven't down, putting a strain on seniors living on fixed incomes.

Meanwhile, traditional Medicare doesn't cover several services that millions of older adults need, such as dental care, vision care, or help at home from aides. While private Medicare Advantage plans offer some coverage for these services, benefits are frequently limited.

All of this contributes to a health care affordability squeeze for older adults. Recently published research from the Commonwealth Fund's 2023 Health Care Affordability Survey found that nearly a third of people 65 or older reported difficulty paying for health care expenses, including premiums for Medicare, medications, and expenses associated with receiving medical services.

Advertisement

One in 7 older adults reported spending a quarter or more of their average monthly budget on health care; 44% spent between 10% and 24%. Seventeen percent said they or a member had forgone needed care in the past year for financial reasons.

The Colyers in Pleasureville are among them. Both need new dentures and eyeglasses, but they can't afford to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket, Connie said.

“As the cost of living rises for basic necessities, it's more difficult for lower-income and middle-income Medicare beneficiaries to afford the health care they need,” said Gretchen Jacobson, vice president of the Medicare program at the Commonwealth Fund. Similarly, “when health care costs rise, it's more difficult to afford basic necessities.”

This is especially worrisome because older adults are more prone to illness and disability than younger adults, resulting in a greater need for care and higher expenses. In 2022, seniors on Medicare spent $7,000 on medical services, with $4,900 for people without Medicare.

Advertisement

Not included in this figure is the cost of assisted living or long-term stays in nursing homes, which Medicare also doesn't cover. According to Genworth's latest survey, the median annual cost of a semiprivate room in a nursing home was $104,000 in 2023, while assisted living came to $64,200, and a 's worth of services from home-health aides averaged $75,500.

Many older adults simply can't afford to pay for these long-term care options or other major medical expenses out-of-pocket.

“Seventeen million older adults have incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level,” said Tricia Neuman, executive director of the Program on Medicare Policy for KFF. (That's $30,120 for a single-person household in 2024; $40,880 for a two-person household.) “For people living on that income, the risk of a major expense is very scary.”

How to deal with unanticipated expenses in the future is a question that haunts Connie Colyer. Her monthly premiums for Medicare Parts B and D, and a Medigap supplemental policy come to nearly $468, or 42% of her $1,121 monthly income from Social Security.

Advertisement

With a home mortgage of $523 a month, and more than $150 in monthly copayments for her inhalers and her husband's heart medications, “we wouldn't make it if my husband wasn't still working,” she told me. (James' monthly Social Security payment is $1,378. His premiums are similar to Connie's and his income fluctuates based on the weather. In the first five months of this year, it approached $10,000, Connie told me.)

The makes too much to qualify for programs that help older adults afford Medicare out-of-pocket costs. As many as 6 million people are eligible but not enrolled in these Medicare Savings Programs. Those with very low incomes may also qualify for dual coverage by Medicaid and Medicare or other types of assistance with household costs, such as food stamps.

Older adults can check their eligibility for these and other programs by contacting their local Area Agency on Agency, State Health Insurance Assistance Program, or benefits enrollment center. Enter your ZIP code at the Eldercare Locator and these and other organizations helping seniors locally will come up.

Persuading older adults to step forward and ask for help often isn't easy. Angela Zeek, health and benefits manager at Legal Aid of the Bluegrass in Kentucky, said many seniors in her area don't want to be considered poor or unable to pay their bills, a blow to their pride. “What we try to say is, ‘You've worked hard all your , you've paid your taxes. You've given back to this government so there's nothing wrong with the government helping you out a bit.'”

Advertisement

And the unfortunate truth is there's very little, if any, help available for seniors who aren't poor but have modest financial resources. While the need for new dental, vision, and long-term care benefits for older adults is widely acknowledged, “the question is always how to pay for it,” said Neuman of KFF.

This will become an even bigger issue in the coming years because of the burgeoning aging population.

There is some relief on the horizon, however: Assistance with Medicare drug costs is available through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, although many older adults don't realize it yet. The act allows Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs for the first time. This year, out-of-pocket costs for medications will be limited to a maximum $3,800 for most beneficiaries. Next year, a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug costs will take effect.

“We're already seeing people who've had very high drug costs in the past save thousands of dollars this year,” said Frederic Riccardi, president of the Medicare Rights Center. “And next year, it's going to get even better.”

Advertisement

——————————
By: Judith Graham
Title: Lack of Affordability Tops Older Americans' List of Health Care Worries
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org//article/health-care-costs-older-americans-worry-election-issues/
Published Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Continue Reading

Kaiser Health News

Beyond PMS: A Poorly Understood Disorder Means Periods of Despair for Some Women

Published

on

Lauren Peace, Tampa Bay Times
Wed, 03 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”

For the most part, Cori Lint was happy.

She worked days as a software engineer and nights as a part-time cellist, filling her hours with inline skating and gardening and long talks with friends. But a few days a month, Lint's mood would tank. Panic attacks came on suddenly. Suicidal thoughts did, too.

Advertisement

She had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, but Lint, 34, who splits her time between St. Petersburg, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, struggled to understand her experience, a rift so extreme she felt like two different people.

“When I felt better, it was like I was looking back at the experience of someone else, and that was incredibly confusing,” Lint said.

Then, in 2022, clarity pierced through. Her symptoms, she realized, were cyclical. Lint recognized a pattern in something her doctors hadn't considered: her period.

For decades, a lack of investment in women's health has created gaps in medicine. The problem is so prevalent that, this year, signed an executive order to advance women's health research and innovation.

Advertisement

Women are less likely than men to get early diagnoses for conditions from heart disease to cancer, studies have found, and they are more likely to have their medical concerns dismissed or misdiagnosed. Because disorders specifically affecting women have long been understudied, much remains unknown about causes and treatments.

That's especially true when it comes to the effects of menstruation on mental health.

When Lint turned to the internet for answers, she learned about a debilitating at the intersection of mental and reproductive health.

Sounds like me, she thought.

Advertisement

What Is PMDD?

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, is a negative reaction in the brain to natural hormonal changes in the week or two before a menstrual period. Symptoms are severe and can include irritability, anxiety, depression, and sudden mood swings. Others include fatigue, joint and muscle pain, and changes to appetite and sleep patterns, with symptoms improving once bleeding begins.

Unlike the mild discomfort of premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, the effects of premenstrual dysphoric disorder are -altering. Those afflicted, according to one estimate, can endure almost four years of disability, cumulatively, over their lives.

Though researchers estimate that the dysphoric disorder affects around 5% of people who menstruate — about the same percentage of women with diabetes — the condition remains relatively unknown, even among health care providers.

Advertisement

In a 2022 survey of PMDD patients published in the Journal of Women's Health, more than a third of participants said their family doctors had little knowledge of the premenstrual disorder or how to treat it. About 40% said the same was true of their mental health therapists.

Reproductive mental health has been sidelined as a specialty, said Jaclyn Ross, a clinical psychologist who researches premenstrual disorders as associate director of the CLEAR Lab at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Only some health care providers get training or even become aware of such disorders, Ross said.

“If you're not considering the menstrual cycle, you're at risk of misdiagnosing and missing what's actually going on,” Ross said.

That was the case for Tampa, Florida, Jenna Tingum, 25, who had panic attacks and suicidal thoughts as a premed student at the of Florida. It wasn't until her college girlfriend read about PMDD online and noticed Tingum's symptoms flared in the days leading up to her period that Tingum talked with her gynecologist.

Advertisement

“I don't think I would have ever put the pieces together,” Tingum said.

Suicide Risk and Treatment

Because few researchers study the condition, the cause of PMDD is something of an enigma, and treatments remain limited.

It wasn't until 2013 that the disorder was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the handbook used by medical professionals in the U.S. to diagnose psychiatric conditions. PMDD was officially recognized by the World Health Organization in 2019, though references in medical literature date to the 1960s.

Advertisement

Defining the disorder as a medical condition faced early pushback from some feminist groups wary of giving credibility to stereotypes about PMS and periods. But Ross said patients must be taken seriously.

In one study, 72% of respondents with the disorder said they'd had suicidal thoughts in their lifetime. And 34% said they had attempted suicide, compared with 3% of the general population.

Marybeth Bohn lost her daughter, Christina Bohn, to suicide in 2021. It was only in the months before her death at age 33 that Christina connected her extreme distress to her cycle — no doctors had asked, Bohn said. Now Bohn, who lives in Columbia, Missouri, works with medical and nursing schools around the country to change curricula and encourage doctors to ask people in mental health emergencies about their premenstrual symptoms and cycles.

“We need more research to understand how and why these reactions to hormones occur,” Ross said. “There's so much work to be done.”

Advertisement

While doctors haven't settled on a universal approach to address the symptoms, three main treatments have emerged, said Rachel Carpenter, medical director of reproductive psychiatry at the University of Florida–Jacksonville College of Medicine.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most common form of antidepressants, are a first line of attack, Carpenter said. Some patients take the medication regularly; others in just the week or two that symptoms occur.

For some patients, hormonal birth control can alleviate symptoms by controlling or preventing the release of certain hormones.

Finally, therapy and cycle awareness can help patients build mental resilience for difficult weeks.

Advertisement

Sandi MacDonald, who co-founded the International Association for Premenstrual Disorders, a leading resource for patients and clinicians, said peer support is available through the nonprofit, but funding for research and education remains elusive.

She hopes the new White House initiative on advancing women's health research will open doors.

Let's Talk About Periods

Both Lint and Tingum, who were diagnosed by medical professionals after learning about the disorder on their own, said a lack of conversation around periods contributed to their care being delayed.

Advertisement

Lint doesn't remember talking much about periods in grade school; they were often the butt of a joke, used to dismiss women.

“For the longest time, I thought, ‘Well, this happens to everyone, right?'” Lint said of her symptoms. “Has a doctor ever asked me what my symptoms are like? No, absolutely not. But we're talking about a quarter or more of my life.”

Brett Buchert, a former University of Florida athlete who took time away from campus because her symptoms were so severe, said that when doctors do ask questions, it can feel like boxes being checked: “ ends there.”

Buchert, who graduated with a degree in psychology and now lives in Boulder, Colorado, said understanding what's happening to her and being aware of her cycle has helped her manage her condition.

Advertisement

Lint and Tingum agreed.

Even as Lint struggles to find a medicine that brings relief, tracking her cycle has allowed her to plan around her symptoms, she said. She makes fewer commitments in the week before her period. She carves out more time for self-care.

She's also found solace in reading stories of others living with the condition, she said.

“It's helped me the extremes,” Lint said. “There's not something wrong with me as an individual. I'm not crazy; this is something that's legitimately happening to me. It helps to know I'm not alone.”

Advertisement

This article was produced through a partnership between KFF Health News and the Tampa Bay Times.

——————————
By: Lauren Peace, Tampa Bay Times
Title: Beyond PMS: A Poorly Understood Disorder Means Periods of Despair for Some Women
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/premenstrual-dysphoric-disorder-pmdd-beyond-pms/
Published Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/pain-doesnt-belong-on-a-scale-of-zero-to-10/

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News from the South

Trending