Oral

Women's health issues cannot be understood in a vacuum. Every aspect of women's health interfaces with existing social norms, conventions, and a multitude of formalized, explicit public health policies. Because of this, women's health issues are embedded with human rights issues by their very nature. This session aims to look at a number of key women's health topics, including access to care for minority communities, sexual assault, domestic violence/ child custody and reproductive rights. The presentations will highlight a variety of methodologies, some quite novel. Studies presented will illustrate the impact of specific women's health problems on individual women, on selected groups of women and, on women in general. Attendees will be exposed to unique ways of delineating scientific questions in the field of women's health, as well as introduced to the way in which investigators choose or develop research methods to study these questions. In studies which utilized an intervention, presenters will report on the efficacy or lack thereof of the chosen intervention. This session will demonstrate the need for women's health issues to be defined in rigorous ways and to be studied with novel,innovative approaches.

Session Objectives: 1. Discuss the interface between public policies; either on a local, national or international stage,and their impact on specific women's health issues such as violence or rape. 2. Discuss a variety of analysis techniques that can be used to evaluate the impact of interventions intended to improve women's health conditions or access to care 3. Formulate innovative studies of women's health conditions using the presenters works as springboard models for further study.