Women need their own health reference source. Research into gender-specific medicine — particularly identifying the ways in which diseases and their treatment affect men and women differently — has gainedground in the past 25 years. While this information is familiar to the medical community, much of it is unknown to the layperson. For example, more women than men die of cardiovascular disease every year, possibly because their symptoms are not recognized. Organized by body system, each chapter starts out with an explanation of how that system works and ways to maintain healthy function through diet, exercise, and other self-help measures. This is followed by an explanation of some of the medical conditions affecting that particular system and how they should be treated — in women, not men. Highly regarded as a women''s health expert and advocate; as a physician educator and as a media commentator, Dr. Moore is the Founder and President of DrDonnica.com, a popular women’s health information website launched in Sept. 2000. She is also Founder and President of Sapphire Women’s Health Group LLC, a multimedia women’s health education and communications firm. Team-written by female specialists in the US and UK, all of whom are experts intheir respective fields.

A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women’s health—from the earliest medical ideas about women’s illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases—brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative. Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis. In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the "wandering womb" of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis. Packed with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged, and rewritten medical orthodoxy—and the men who controlled their fate—this is a revolutionary examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine. With these case histories, Elinor pays homage to the women who suffered so strides could be made, and shows how being unwell has become normalized in society and culture, where women have long been distrusted as reliable narrators of their own bodies and pain. But the time for real change is long overdue: answers reside in the body, in the testimonies of unwell women—and their lives depend on medicine learning to listen.

Editor of the award-winning site Feministing.com, Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with doctors and researchers, and personal stories from women across the country to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today. In Doing Harm, Dusenbery explores the deep, systemic problems that underlie women’s experiences of feeling dismissed by the medical system. Women have been discharged from the emergency room mid-heart attack with a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, while others with autoimmune diseases have been labeled “chronic complainers” for years before being properly diagnosed. Women with endometriosis have been told they are just overreacting to “normal” menstrual cramps, while still others have “contested” illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia that, dogged by psychosomatic suspicions, have yet to be fully accepted as “real” diseases by the whole of the profession. An eye-opening read for patients and health care providers alike, Doing Harm shows how women suffer because the medical community knows relatively less about their diseases and bodies and too often doesn’t trust their reports of their symptoms. The research community has neglected conditions that disproportionately affect women and paid little attention to biological differences between the sexes in everything from drug metabolism to the disease factors—even the symptoms of a heart attack. Meanwhile, a long history of viewing women as especially prone to “hysteria” reverberates to the present day, leaving women battling against a stereotype that they’re hypochondriacs whose ailments are likely to be “all in their heads.” Offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its sometimes catastrophic consequences, Doing Harm is a rallying wake-up call that will change the way we look at health care for women.

Since it was first published in 1999, Helping Women Recover has set the standard for best practice in the field of women’s treatment. Helping Women Recover is based on Dr. Covington’s Women’s Integrated Treatment (WIT) model. It offers a program specifically designed to meet the unique needs of women who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs or have co-occurring disorders. This thoroughly revised and updated edition includes evidence-based and empirically tested therapeutic interventions which are used to treat addiction and trauma in an innovative way. The Helping Women Recover program offers counselors, mental health professionals, and program administrators the tools they need to implement a gender-responsive, trauma-informed treatment program in group therapy settings or with individual clients. Included in SAMHSA's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.

This guide to the Twelve Steps from Dr. Stephanie S. Covington, a pioneer in the field of women’s issues, addiction, and recovery, preserves the spirit of the Alcoholics Anonymous program with a focus on healing language with women’s needs in mind. Published in 1994, A Woman's Way through the Twelve Steps has long been a unique resource that helps women find their own paths in recovery—paths shaped by the way women experience not only addiction and recovery, but also relationships, self, sexuality, spirituality, and everyday life. Now, stories from five new voices expand the perspective of this recovery classic. Over the past thirty years, what it means to identify as a woman in recovery has broadened to include transgender, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse people. This new edition includes updated, inclusive language to be more trauma-sensitive and welcoming to all women. This compilation of diverse voices and wisdom from real people illuminates how women understand the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and offers inspiring stories of how they travel through the Steps and discover what works for them. The book can be used alone or as a companion to AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. By identifying and addressing the special issues that recovery presents for women, this book empowers women to take ownership of their own journeys and to grow and flourish in recovery.

“[A] powerful account of the sexism cooked into medical care ... will motivate readers to advocate for themselves.”—Publishers Weekly STARRED Review A groundbreaking and feminist work of investigative reporting: Explains why women experience healthcare differently than men Shares the author’s journey of fighting for an endometriosis diagnosis In Pain and Prejudice, acclaimed investigative reporter Gabrielle Jackson takes readers behind the scenes of doctor’s offices, pharmaceutical companies, and research labs to show that—at nearly every level of healthcare—men’s health claims are treated as default, whereas women’s are often viewed as a-typical, exaggerated, and even completely fabricated. The impacts of this bias? Women are losing time, money, and their lives trying to navigate a healthcare system designed for men. Almost all medical research today is performed on men or male mice, making most treatments tailored to male bodies only. Even conditions that are overwhelmingly more common in women, such as chronic pain, are researched on mostly male bodies. Doctors and researchers who do specialize in women’s healthcare are penalized financially, as procedures performed on men pay higher. Meanwhile, women are reporting feeling ignored and dismissed at their doctor’s offices on a regular basis. Jackson interweaves these and more stunning revelations in the book with her own story of suffering from endometriosis, a condition that affects up to 20% of American women but is poorly understood and frequently misdiagnosed. She also includes an up-to-the-minute epilogue on the ways that Covid-19 are impacting women in different and sometimes more long-lasting ways than men. A rich combination of journalism and personal narrative, Pain and Prejudice reveals a dangerously flawed system and offers solutions for a safer, more equitable future.