Nearly 17% of today's active duty service members are women.
As these women are continuing to serve, the Women and Infant Clinical Community has developed the Wise Health for Women Warriors podcast to support primary care managers who need additional information when caring for women warriors.
Army Lt. Col. (Dr.) Erin Keyser, an OB/GYN physician at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas; hosts multiple 30-minute podcast episodes and discusses the most common questions WICC receives from PCMs about women's health.
Thus far, the eight planned episodes of the Wise Health for Women Warriors podcast covers topics like postpartum depression, pelvic floor health, intimate partner violence, infertility, and more.
"This podcast is a resource for those primary care managers who are not specialized, or familiar, in women's health," Keyser said. "Female service members will face unique situations while on deployment and need to be addressed prior to deployment. I hope that the topics covered in this podcast will assist on those topics, plus bring awareness to other important female-centered topics."
Keyser explained that she and her colleagues often assist PCMs when it comes to treatment recommendations and answers to difficult questions. Common questions such as: How should a beneficiary begin menstrual suppression? Or what infertility services are available in the military?
Other subject matter experts will join Keyser on the podcast. On the first episode, Keyser included Army Col. (Dr.) Nicole Powell Dunford, en route care group medical director at the Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory. The two discussed ways to optimize female service members' care before, during and after deployment.
"Preparing military women for field training and deployment improves readiness," Dunford said.
Though the intention for this podcast is for health care providers, Keyser stated; she also believes the podcast will also support female service members when seeing their PCM. She added that female service members should feel confident in their PCM and the care they are receiving when it comes to women's health topics.
The Wise Health for Woman Warriors podcast is available on iTunes and www.health.mil/podcasts.