EP 003: Self-Advocacy Tips and Stigma Busting With Medical Herstory + Tori Ford

It’s a sad reality that women and gender-diverse people are more likely to be dismissed as overly emotional, dramatic, or untrustworthy in medical settings. This can have serious consequences like misdiagnosis, delays in care, dismissal of patients’ concerns, and mistreatment. So, how can we navigate a health system with such ingrained biases?

In today’s Your Health Unlocked Podcast episode, Tori Ford, founder and executive director of Medical Herstory, speaks with us about her mission to improve medical education, promote patient advocacy, and eliminate stigma to advance gender health equity.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Common challenges women and gender-diverse people face when accessing health care
• Practical tips to help advocate for yourself when navigating health, wellness, and medical care
• How health practitioners can become more aware of the gender biases they hold to improve medical interactions with patients
• How Medical Herstory is challenging the social processes in health care that label and stereotype women, genderqueer, BIPOC, and disabled people.

More about Tori:

Tori Ford founded Medical Herstory, an award-winning, youth-led, international nonprofit working to eliminate sexism, shame, and stigma from health care through storytelling, medical education, and patient advocacy. It is a global movement with over 100 volunteers across 7 countries, working to advance health equity by creating a shared space where lived experiences can be shared.

Tori has a background in gender studies and is pursuing a PhD in Primary Healthcare at the University of Oxford, where she focuses on women’s health research, emphasizing gender health inequities.

Medical Herstory was born out of Tori’s experiences of feeling dismissed by different healthcare providers. Tori is passionate about sharing issues people deal with in medical settings to prevent unnecessary pain and suffering in silence.

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