Rarely does a blogger reprint a press release. But I am SO proud of EmpowHer, on whose advisory board I serve, and SO happy for my friends Pat Elliott and Michelle Robson, whom I introduced to each other when Pat was diagnosed with CML, that I have to do this (and besides, yesterday was Pat’s birthday and one year since her diagnosis and she’s now cancer-free and advocating for patients on EmpowHer.

In my mind, EmpowHer represents the best of what the internet offers for health care.

Pat Elliott is a cancer patient whose quick online advice to others about cancer and other health issues onEmpowHER.com, a Top 10 women’s health and wellness resource and community, is also helping her manage her own medical condition. Elliott, who lives in Phoenix, is one of a growing network of national patient advocates who are helping others to improve their own health.

For Elliott and many other women who serve as Patient Guides at EmpowHER, it’s all in a 24-hour day’s work. They are the caring and compassionate voices at the other end of EmpowHER.com, responding to health questions from EmpowHER members within 24 hours. Guides respond to all questions submitted and the average response time from an EmpowHER Guide is 4 – 5 hours. However, women who sign up for a free membership with EmpowHER are guaranteed a response within 24 hours.

Through the ASK A Health Question form on the website, women who come to the site are able to reach out to a trained individual who may be able to help a member through a difficult situation when access to medical advice may be limited. EmpowHER Guides can often offer exceptional resources on EmpowHER and other sites that may be able to help women, as well some understanding in times of need.

As part of her own journey through the medical quagmire of cancer care, Elliott immersed herself in helping others. “I advocate for my own health every day to get the best care possible. Helping others is healing to me, providing an uplifting and positive experience,” says Elliott.

The 24-hour turnaround commitment is designed to help women with health issues who are worried and need information quickly. “When I was ill and kept asking questions on web sites and wasn’t receiving the answers I desperately needed, I knew that there were other women out there with similar experiences,” said Michelle King Robson, Founder, Chairperson and CEO of EmpowHER, who notes that EmpowHER’s goal is to give women information that will help them properly advocate for their own health when they need it — as soon as possible. “No one likes to wait if you have a health issue, whether if it’s for your doctor’s appointment or a post on a web site. Women want to know that someone is there to help them in their time of need. With our 24 Hour Promise, they know they will get that from us.”

“While our team is not a substitute for one’s own doctor or other health care professional, they do provide insight and can help them with further resources,” adds King Robson.

To date, the website has received nearly 6,000 ASKS and Guides have provided 24,000 responses to original questions and comments.

About EmpowHER
EmpowHER is an award-winning health media company for women. The Company’s website provides visitors access to one of the largest women’s health and wellness content libraries on the web, as well as the largest online community of women discussing their health and wellness issues. EmpowHER promotes a “24 Hour Promise” to its visitors, who can come to the site, ask any health question and receive a response within 24 hours. Health care marketers rely on EmpowHER for reaching the most influential health and wellness buying audience on the Internet — women. Millions of women visit EmpowHER.com every year, making it one of the largest and fastest-growing resources dedicated exclusively to women’s health and wellness. For more, visit www.empowher.com.

I feel compelled to add my voice to all the others talking about mammograms.

I spent years married to a radiologist who did nothing all day but diagnose DCIS and other cancers. He prided himself on his ability to diagnose ductile carcinoma in situ, and he thought he was saving lives. He didn’t know that many of those never progress, and in fact go away. He died before digital imaging became the norm, and he started to practice before doctors appreciated the dangers of overexposure to radiation. Like many radiologists, he died of cancer.

So my thoughts about mammograms are very complex. I’ll try to sum them up.

1) in America, we overdiagnose many diseases and treat things that don’t need to be treated.
2) medical knowledge is constantly changing
3) most medical knowledge is merely opinion
4) suggesting that we now overexpose women to needless radiation and biopsies isn’t rationing — it’s sound science for today
5) breast cancer and prostate cancer have something in common: they subject men and women to assaults on their dignity and sexuality, sometimes for nothing
6) men and women should be able to make their own choices about screening, so I’m glad insurance is still going to cover mammograms for women in their 40s
7) even my husband used to say that mammograms were not as good at detecting cancer as other forms of imaging for high risk women

See how complicated this is? It’s unfortunate that the panel of “experts,” which apparently didn’t have a breast cancer expert on it, released this while we are debating health care reform. It’s easy to see this new guideline as a way to ration care under “Obamacare.” Between this and the Stupak amendment, it is easy to draw the conclusion that we’re bending the cost curve over the backs of women.

But again, it’s complex. We’ve found out the same things about prostate cancer screening, so it’s not just about women. This is what is known as “evidence-based medicine” : let’s spend the money on things that do work, rather than pitch it away on things that don’t. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Why waste scarce health care dollars. Let’s only do things that are proven to work.

I’m a fan of outcomes-based medicine. I long ago learned that most back surgeries don’t work (for long), and that surgeons sell surgery as a panacea the way pharma sells drugs as a panacea. If we were spending our own money, and not the government’s or an insurance company’s, believe me we’d be finding out the most effective (and cost-effective treatments) before we authorize anything. It’s only because medicine is mostly paid for by third parties much removed from ourselves that we demand everything.

I don’t have the answers. I just want to raise the right questions, and keep us talking rationally instead of degenerating into ideological rants about science-based findings.