Women’s Healthcast

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.