QUESTION
Council Member Louis Asks DOHMH About Factors Behind Women's Health Disparities
0:27:48
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123 sec
Council Member Farah Louis inquires into the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's (DOHMH) perspective on factors contributing to disparities in women's health care, specifically breast cancer. The response outlines numerous layers causing inequities, including social determinants of health and access barriers. Initiatives like mobile mammography vans aim to reduce these disparities by providing services in neighborhoods with high breast cancer rates.
Speaker 1
0:27:48
What factors does DO HMH attribute to the disparities in the provision of women's health care?
0:27:54
And what particular programming or initiatives does your agency conduct to address these factors?
Speaker 4
0:28:01
Yes.
0:28:01
Thank you for that question.
0:28:03
And again, we're really thankful for counsel's interest in focusing on women's health and women's inequities specifically.
0:28:11
We see many, many layers that drive women's health inequities that New York City is facing.
0:28:16
I think breast cancer is one of the most important areas for us to look at.
0:28:21
Specifically, from our perspective, there are a number of reasons why we see so many inequities in both diagnosis, treatment, and mortality, and outcomes for women around breast cancer, it at many levels is related to everything from access to health care, whether that's, you know, paying fees when you're going to get that health care.
0:28:43
Having the time to get your mammogram every year, having the primary care doctor who can help encourage you to do that, all the way up to things like not actually having reliable housing or employment, which makes doing things like an annual mammogram.
0:29:00
Even more difficult.
0:29:02
So this really gets at the social determinants of care as well.
0:29:06
It's not only the health care, it's also the whole entire context of a woman or someone who identifies as a woman who needs to be able to get access to those different services.
0:29:16
So we see lots of layers to the reasons why these inequities happen.
0:29:21
I do want to highlight 1 breast cancer program that I mentioned in my testimony which is really focused on the mobile mammograms and really bringing them to the neighborhoods where we see some of the highest rates of breast cancer more already with the goal of really reducing as many barriers as we possibly can.
Speaker 1
0:29:41
Thank you for that.
0:29:42
I forgot to mention that we were joined by my colleagues counsel members, Koban and Gutierrez, back to programmatic services.