Taking Care of You
The Empowered Woman’s Guide to Better Health
A practical and extensive resource guide by Mayo Clinic Press for women who want to understand and take charge of their own health, presented in short, easy-to-digest chapters.
Women do not always receive the same healthcare as men. In fact, for too long medicine has not recognized that numerous health conditions — like heart disease, stroke, stress, mental health and more — impact women differently than men. Orthopedic surgeon Mary I. O’Connor and medical anthropologist Kanwal L. Haq want to change that by empowering women with knowledge about the current landscape of women’s health, and showing them how to actively engage with their healthcare team.
In a groundbreaking publication, Taking Care of You: The Empowered Woman’s Guide to Better Health, O’Connor and Haq have enlisted 111 leading women physicians and health experts from all across the country to create a practical resource guide for women to improve their health and obtain better healthcare.
Taking Care of You is refreshingly supportive and jargon-free, with colorful illustrations to help the reader better understand what can often be dense medical information. Its unique approach includes three main sections:
WOMEN AND THE CURRENT HEALTH LANDSCAPE includes topics like:
- What exactly is “women’s health”
- How to find the right healthcare team
- How to use the internet for medical information
- When to go to urgent care versus the emergency department
- And much more
COMMON CLINICAL CONDITIONS IMPACTING WOMEN focuses on 55 non-reproductive clinical conditions that impact women more than men, or differently than men. They include:
- Breast, lung, cervical, and ovarian cancer
- High blood pressure, cholesterol, blood clots and stroke
- Anxiety, depression, obesity and metabolic syndrome
- Thyroid disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis
- Painful sex, pelvic inflammatory disease, polycystic ovary syndrome, urinary tract infection and incontinence, uterine fibroids and abnormal vaginal bleeding
Each chapter is divided into subsections that explain:
- What is the condition?
- Can it be prevented?
- How is it treated? Why does it matter to women? (Including differences related to sex, race and ethnicity)
- Questions to ask your clinician and healthcare team
- Pearls of wisdom from clinical experts
Taking Care of You focuses on activities women can do everyday — like eating well, sleeping and exercising — and how to effectively engage in these pillars of health to take better care of themselves.
Taking Care of You is an easy-to-use and accessible guide to be shared between mother and daughter, sister, aunt, and grandmother — an essential resource for every woman, and those who love her.
Mary I. O'Connor, M.D., is an orthopedic surgeon, health equity leader, healthcare entrepreneur, and former U.S. Olympic athlete (Women’s Rowing, 1980). She is co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Vori Health, a spine and orthopedic telemedicine company on a mission to empower all people to better health. After a distinguished career at Mayo Clinic where Dr. O’Connor was awarded Professor Emerita status, she went on to lead the Center for Musculoskeletal Care at Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Health and was Professor of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at Yale School of Medicine. A passionate advocate for health equity, Dr. O’Connor has led the national non-profit coalition, Movement is Life, since its inception in 2010 in its efforts to eliminate musculoskeletal health disparities. A graduate of Yale University, Dr. O’Connor obtained her medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine and completed her orthopedic residency and fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/MaryOConnorMD and LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/maryoconnormd/
Kanwal L Haq, M.S., is a medical anthropologist, community organizer, and non-profit consultant. She currently leads the NYC women’s health programs at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. An applied-research scientist dedicated to education and health equity, Kanwal utilizes community-based participatory research and implementation science to build more effective, efficient and equitable systems of care for women across the world. Her desire to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and community resources served as the catalyst for Taking Care of You. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Kanwal worked at Yale School of Medicine and completed fellowships at the United Nations, Americorps, and the University Teaching Hospital (CHUK) in Kigali, Rwanda. Kanwal completed her B.S. in biological sciences from the University of Missouri and her M.S. in medical anthropology from the Boston University School of Medicine. She can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/kanwallhaq and LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kanwallhaq/
