NC Health Care for Women Gets Mixed Grades

NC Women's health care gets mixed grades in new report from the Center for Women's Health Research at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The good news...

• Fewer women are smoking and dying from heart disease and stroke, and more are getting screenings for cancer

The bad news...

• Social barriers are worsening. More than 16 percent of all North Carolina women have no health insurance
• Diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol are rapidly increasing in women
• mental health trends show a growing population of women depressed after giving birth, and depressed in general, especially among African-Americans

This continues an alarming number of declining or mixed trends reflecting poor progress in many areas during the administration of Governor Mike Easley and Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue.

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News and Observer
July 26, 2007
Carolina Astigarraga, Staff Writer

Report: NC Lags in care for women
UNC center gives "F" grades on diabetes, health insurance

RALEIGH - When Pam Dickens found a lump in her breast two years ago, she was confronted with some bad news.

It was not that the lump was necessarily malignant -- it was that because she was in a wheelchair, she could not even take a mammogram to find out.

Dickens, women's health coordinator for the N.C. Office on Disability and Health, hopes the 2007 North Carolina Women's Health Report Card will help more handicapped women get the care they need. Nearly one in three women in North Carolina have some disability, according to the report. Read more...