I'll be spending next Wednesday afternoon at the Fifth Annual Stanford Women's Health Forum, where the best thing about the event is also its most frustrating: There are a lot of good speakers. How does one choose between hearing about the power of training adolescent girls to say no to unwanted sexual advances, and learning from Shuchi Anand, MD, MS, a Stanford nephrologist and epidemiologist who tracks gender-related risk factors for chronic disease in developing regions?
Such difficult choices have been typical of the abundant schedule for each year's forum, organized by the Stanford WDSM Center, previously known by its longer title, the Stanford Center for Health Research on Women and Sex Differences in Medicine. WSDM selects a theme for the forum and doubles the opportunities for audiences by offering two talks each hour. Last year's forum focused on breast cancer and featured keynote speaker Susan Love, MD, a breast cancer specialist and leukemia survivor. This year's theme is global health, and the impressive list of speakers begins with Ruth Levine, PhD, director of the global development and population program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
In addition to the talks, whose moderators include Jesse Draper, creator and host of "The Valley Girl Show," the event features informational presentations on the Stanford Health Library, Stanford Hospital's Aging Adult Services and Navigation Services programs, lung CT screening, new breast cancer screening technologies, peripheral artery disease diagnostics, and the medical application of the latest in immersive 3-D technologies.
The free event is held at the Arrillaga Alumni Center on the Stanford campus, and those who are interested can register here. For those who can't make the event, WSDM will post videos of its forum on its YouTube channel.
Previously: Empowerment training prevents rape of Kenyan girls, Videos from Stanford 2013 Women’s Health Forum available online and At Stanford event, cancer advocate Susan Love talks about “a future with no breast cancer”
