Women’s Healthcast

At the Intersection of Obesity and Women's Health

Obesity can affect many aspects of women's health, from fertility to pregnancy complications to increased risk of some gynecologic cancers. 

In this episode, Dr. Paola Gehrig discusses the intersection of women's health and obesity. Dr. Gehrig is a professor and director of the gynecologic oncology division at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She discussed how obesity can increase the risk for more than a dozen types of cancer, why obesity is a growing issue around the world, and how physicians and medical professionals can approach the issue with patients.

What You Need to Know About Preeclampsia

May is Preeclampsia Awareness Month. This hypertensive pregnancy disorder affects up to 8 percent of pregnancies, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it. Why does it happen? How can we predict or prevent it? Why do we still use the diagnosis and treatment tools developed in the 1960s? To learn more about preeclampsia, current clinical care standards and new discoveries on the horizon, I talked to two experts in the UW-Madison Department of Ob-Gyn.

Kara Hoppe is a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in the department. She deals with complex pregnancy conditions. Dr. Hoppe shared diagnostic criteria for preeclampsia, what she does when a patient develops the condition, and how hypertensive issues during pregnancy can affect your health later in life.

Derek Boeldt is a basic science researcher in the UW Department of Ob-Gyn. Since joining the Department of Ob-Gyn, Dr. Boeldt has focused his research on understanding the origins of preeclampsia and pioneering new ways to treat it.

Want to support preeclampsia research and awareness? Check out the Promise Walks coming up this spring. And the UW Ob-Gyn Promoting Healthy Pregnancies – Maternal-Fetal Health Fund also supports innovative research to help moms with high-risk pregnancy conditions!

Everybody Has a Conscience: Moral Agency and Reproductive Health Care

We're all familiar with the concept of conscientious objection - opting out of something based on ethics or beliefs. But what about the idea that conscience can also propel us to do something?

In early March, Lisa Harris, MD, of the University of Michigan Medical School Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology delivered a special lecture to the UW Department of Ob-Gyn. After her Grand Rounds presentation on moral agency and the provision of contested reproductive health care, Dr. Harris discussed reproductive justice and how to be a good women's health advocate with the Women's Healthcast.

Dr. Harris is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School and a renowned researcher on the intersection of women’s healthcare and policy.

Battling Burnout: A Conversation on Physician Wellness

David Kushner is a gynecologic oncologist in the UW Department of Ob-Gyn and a national expert in physician wellness. In 2018, ob-gyns reported the fourth-highest rate of burnout among US physicians. Dr. Kushner discussed what contributes to physician burnout, what it means for patients, and what the medical community is doing to address this issue.

The Goal is Cancer Prevention: HPV and Vaccination

Nearly 80 million Americans have some strain of the human papillomavirus, which can cause several types of cancer in men and women. The CDC recommends that adolescents receive the HPV vaccine, which protects against cancer-causing strains, but vaccine uptake remains low. To learn more about the virus, vaccination, and new projects to fight HPV at the University of Wisconsin, we talked to Dr. Jake Lauer of the UW Department of Ob-Gyn.

Pregnancy: Fact and Fiction

Dr. Kristen Sharp, assistant professor in general obstetrics and gynecology and medical director of the UW-Madison Department of Ob-Gyn's CenteringPregnancy program, plays pregnancy true or false and discusses the value of group prenatal care.

Infant Mortality in Wisconsin: Where Do We Go From Here?

In the first episode of Women's Healthcast, Dr. Deborah Ehrenthal discusses Wisconsin's recent ranking as the worst state in the US for African-American infant mortality, and new health disparities initiatives in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Ehrenthal is the director of the UW Ob-Gyn Division of Reproductive and Population Health.