At the same time as pursuing my academic career, I have also been pursuing medical treatment for a chronic gynecological pain condition that I didn't even know existed. This experience has exposed me to a reality that few people know about: the crisis in healthcare for women's pain.*
*The pain conditions that I will be discussing may affect anyone with female anatomy, regardless of gender identity. Because of the relevant societal and historical connotations, I am using the term “women,” but I really mean “people with vaginas.”Despite the prevalence of chronic vulvar, vaginal, and pelvic pain conditions (affecting up to 28% of American women at some point in their lives; Harlow et al., 2014), most medical providers, and even heavily credentialed gynecologists, do not know about the existence of these conditions, much less how to diagnose and treat them. These conditions are highly stigmatized and receive little public attention or awareness, and because of this, many people suffer in silence, blaming themselves for pain they and their doctors don’t understand.
As psychologists and scientists, we have a unique role and responsibility to compensate for our field's history of promoting the harmful view of women’s vulvar, vaginal, and pelvic pain as originating from the psyche rather than from treatable medical conditions, resulting the the dismissal and pathologizing of women's pain in medical settings (Srajer, 2023).
Set to this background, I’ve built a coalition of patients, medical providers, researchers, and other allies to change this reality.
Here are a few of the actions that I have taken:
- Organized the New Haven chapter of Tight Lipped and collaborated with Yale's OBGYN department to ensure that residents receive some education about chronic vulvovaginal pain conditions.
- Penned an Op Ed detailing my experiences seeking care for chronic gynecological pain while a student at Cornell University, and calling for the University to address the problems in gynecological care at its student health center.
- Testified in the Stakeholder Perspectives session of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Assessment of NIH Research on Women's Health in January 2024, urging that chronic pelvic and vulvovaginal pain condition be identified as a high priority research area:
- Participated as a patient representative from Tight Lipped in the 2024 Vulvodynia Summit in Washington, D.C., where I presented on the barriers to care for chronic vulvovaginal pain conditions and the urgency of the need for accessible treatments. There are still no FDA approved treatments for chronic vulvar pain ("vulvodynia").
Eventually (eight years after first seeking treatment), I was able to receive the surgery that I needed and get it covered under my health insurance plan. It should never require the level of education, perservence, energy, and luck that it took me to get a medically necessary and life-changing surgery for a condition this common. I am determined to change how the healthcare system treats people with these conditions and to use my current and future positions and institution affiliations to help advance this change.