Blog

By Maggie Gorini Based on an informal poll of 9 staff members, 4 of us admitted to having an old bottle of unfinished opioids on the shelf at home, gathering maybe its 10th year of dust. But how could that be? Aren’t we all knowledgeable health advocates that follow every single up-to-date health recommendation? We try, ...

By Julia Kagan Just under 37 million people worldwide are HIV positive, and the toll on the LGBTQ+ community is disproportionate to that of the general public. The odds of living with a positive diagnosis for transgender women can be up to 49 times that of someone in the general population, and gay/bisexual men make up ...

With few exceptions, current federal law does not require cosmetics manufacturers to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration before their products go on the market. In fact, manufacturers aren’t required to list all of their ingredients, test their products, use good manufacturing practices to prevent contamination, or even recall products they know are ...

In response to the confirmation of two hard-right Supreme Court justices and an increasingly hostile judiciary that threatens women’s access to clinic-based abortion, the NWHN has been working hard to demystify medication abortion for the public and push back against medically unnecessary restrictions imposed by states and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). We want ...

By Tessa Ruff On March 26 and 27, the FDA convened a meeting of the General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel to investigate the safety of breast implants following a reported link between textured implants and lymphoma, as well as a range of reported systemic autoimmune symptoms following implantation, collectively known as breast implant illness (BII). ...

By Tessa Ruff In Kentucky this spring, unvaccinated eighteen-year-old Jerome Kunkel sued the Northern Kentucky Health Department when he was blocked from participating in his school’s basketball team following a chickenpox outbreak at his private Catholic school. The health department had implemented a three-week ban for unvaccinated students to attend classes or participate in extracurricular activities ...

I received innumerable calls in the last few months encouraging me to sign up for Medicare. The callers know one important fact about me: I’m turning 65 soon. With a few exceptions, age is all that counts with Medicare. Turn 65 and you’re eligible. The story was different when my 27-year-old daughter enrolled in Medicaid during ...

By Tessa Ruff Human sexuality, pregnancy prevention, and pregnancy intention are all complicated issues. And, people must balance a range of trade-offs when selecting the contraceptive option that works best for their unique situation. Many methods are available, which work differently and have diverse side effects, as well as other important considerations. Complicating matters, what one ...

By Tessa Ruff In 2016, the FDA reclassified transvaginal mesh used to repair pelvic organ prolapse (POP) as a Class III device—the highest risk category—in response to over 20,000 adverse event reports during a three-year period alone. The NWHN actively fought for the change, which also should have required manufacturers to submit thorough, randomized safety and ...

By: Caitlin Hoff, Consumer Advocate at ConsumerSafety and NWHN Staff The National Women’s Health Network (NWHN) has long advocated for the greater participation of women and other key groups in clinical trials for all drugs and devices, and particularly for products that are principally marketed and used by women.  For decades, health research was done on men ...