Illinois received an F for failure on the nation’s first “Report Card” on women’s health, ranking 37th overall among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The state earned failing grades on its rates of infant and maternal mortality, the percentage of women with high blood pressure, diabetes and chlamydia (the most common bacterial STD and one of the most dangerous), and the percentage of women who die from stroke, are uninsured, or have no access to an abortion provider. Among black women, the rate of infant mortality is nearly three times the rate for white women, the maternal mortality rate is five times higher, and they die at higher rates from breast cancer, lung cancer, stroke and heart disease.
But Illinois is not alone.
“Making the Grade on Women’s Health: A National and State-by-State Report Card,” released Aug. 22 by the National Women’s Law Center, FOCUS on Health & Leadership for Women at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine, and The Lewin Group, a health policy consulting firm, took the entire nation to task, giving it an overall grade of “unsatisfactory.”
“We thought it was important to try to establish a set of indicators to give people an overall picture of women’s health to begin to set out some measures of accountability and comparison,” said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center.
And rather than looking at a particular health issue or a “disease of the week,” said Susanna Ginsburg, vice president of The Lewin Group, the report “wanted to call attention to the range of issues that need to be addressed.”
The Report Card established 25 benchmarks for women’s health that were based on the 10-year objectives set for the nation by the federal government’s Healthy People 2000 initiative.
None of the states met all of the benchmarks, and 10 benchmarks were missed by every state. No state met the targets for providing prenatal care to at least 90 percent of all pregnant women during the first trimester of pregnancy, for adequately reducing the prevalence of diabetes or high blood pressure, or for providing insurance to 100 percent of its uninsured.
No state met the goals for increasing women’s physical activity, reducing obesity or improving nutrition.
All states did meet one benchmark: At least 60 percent of women age 50 and over had received mammograms within the past two years. That achievement, Ginsburg said, illustrates how important public policies are to progress in women’s health. “Medicare has started paying for mammograms. There’s been a major emphasis on educating women on the need for mammograms, and a lot of outreach to get women to come in for testing.”
For that reason, the Report Card also measured the policies that different states have put into place to address women’s health-care needs. Here again, the news was not good. Fewer than half the states require private insurers to cover Pap smears to detect cervical cancer. Although depression strikes twice as many women as men, only four states require insurers to cover mental health disorders on the same basis as physical disorders. Only three states require insurers to cover screening for chlamydia, and 10 mandate coverage of anorexia and bulimia on par with other physical conditions. A majority of states have no laws mandating private insurers that cover the cost of prescription drugs to cover contraceptives. Ginsburg did note, however, that Illinois did “much better” than other states in some areas. “It has a number of policies in place on the wellness and prevention side, which are critical for improving overall health.”
Illinois is among a handful of states with high levels of public funding for diabetes-control programs and community-based arthritis treatment programs. It has a state-funded osteoporosis public-education program. It mandates private insurance coverage for Pap smears, mammograms, post-mastectomy reconstructive surgery, and post-mastectomy hospital stays for durations determined by the doctor and the patient, not the insurer.
Illinois is one of only two states that mandate insurance coverage for colorectal screening. Just four states, including Illinois, legally mandate services to ensure that non-English speaking patients have access to health care.
———-
The Report Card is available from the National Women’s Law Center at 202-588-5180 or online at www.nwlc.org.
