Our aim is to highlight several of the alarming gaps in knowledge which make effective prevention, treatment, and cure impossible. Our goal is to bring much needed attention and resources to women's health research. Click here to learn more about health conditions concerning Native American women. Heart disease in women often goes undetected and untreated until the disease has become severe. Drugs to treat hypertension have been tested primarily on white male populations.
Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer of American women today.
If current trends continue, the death rate among women from smoking-related diseases will exceed that of men by early next century. Teenage women now smoke at higher rates than their male counterparts. Studies show doctors are more apt to give stop-smoking messages to male patients than to women, although such advice greatly increases the likelihood of quitting. In 1996, approximately 184,300 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed, and 44,300 women are expected to die from this disease. 1 in 8 women in the United States will develop breast cancer during her lifetime.