Search Results for: blog women and hiv

Arkansas Has a Women’s Health (Family Planning) Program

Arkansas has a Medicaid program that has a few different parts. As far as I can tell, their regular Medicaid program covers women who are pregnant. Arkansas also has a program called “Women’s Health (Family Planning)”. Medicaid is a public, or government run, form of health insurance. The purpose is to provide individuals and families who are low-income, and who cannot afford to buy a health insurance plan from a private health insurance company, to be able to have access to health care. Medicaid is funded both by the federal government and by the government of an individual state. Typically, … Continue reading →

The State of Texas Didn’t Expand its Medicaid Program

The state of Texas was in the news when Governor Rick Perry announced that he will not expand the state’s Medicaid program. It isn’t easy to find eligibility requirements for Medicaid in Texas from the state’s websites. I’ve been writing a series of blogs that give details about the eligibility requirements for Medicaid in individual states. Several states make it really easy to find out this vital information. Texas, however, is among the states that make it extremely difficult for a person to find out if he or she is eligible for Medicaid. You pretty much have to apply online, … Continue reading →

Women’s Health Care Just Got More Affordable!

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As of August 1, 2012, the Affordable Care Act requires all health insurance plans to cover women’s preventative care without a co-payment or cost-sharing requirement. This means that women who have health insurance can get the care they need at a much more affordable price. August 1, 2012, is seen by many as a day of celebration for American women, and their families. This is because the Affordable Care Act now requires all health insurance plans to cover women’s preventative care without charging women a co-pay or deductible in order to receive these types of health care. This is the … Continue reading →

Soy and Hot Flashes

If you have suffered from hot flashes, you know you would give almost anything for a cure. Some say soy is the answer while others say no. I know when I first started experiencing hot flashes, I tried soy milk. Actually, it didn’t taste that bad, but then the hot flashes subsided a bit and I quit drinking it. But, did it work? One study at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine said that soy isoflavone supplements didn’t work. Researchers spent $3 million and two years following women ages 45 to 60 within five years of menopause. The … Continue reading →

Romney and Obama Have Different Family Stories

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Genealogy is the study of family. This includes research that involves digging through archives, both digital and paper. It also involves the collection of family stories. Often, those stories tell more about a person’s family tree than the vital records will. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have videos that are vastly different from each other. Each one speaks volumes. Technology is a wonderful thing. Genealogists can now take videos of their family, and send it to relatives that live across the country or around the world. You can take old family photos and create slide shows from them. Genealogists today … Continue reading →

Beauty and Marriage

Knowing I was a big fan of Elizabeth Taylor Mick mentioned early this morning that she had died. The world has lost a great actress. Her career spanned seven decades and who could forget her as a beguiling young beauty in National Velvet or her great roles as Virginia Woolf? She was also extremely beautiful but it seems that her beauty did not bring her great happiness. As well as being remembered for her acting, and winning two academy awards, she is synonymous in some people’s minds with marriage and divorce. Eight marriages included her marriage to and divorce from … Continue reading →

Walt Disney and NASA

Walt Disney visiting Wernher von Braun at the Marshall Space Flight Center When preparing my article on the Walt Disney Family Museum’s video contest, I searched a stock photography website for historic images of Walt Disney. I was baffled to find a NASA-owned picture of him alongside scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun. My husband didn’t understand my incredulity. He said that’s what top executives do: rub shoulders with other powerful people. Walt Disney was a great mover and shaker in his day and it makes sense that he’d hang around NASA or any other large company or government institution. I … Continue reading →

Signs and Progress of Labor

If you are going through your first pregnancy, you may wonder from time to time what it will be like when you finally reach your due date. One of the biggest questions women have is how they know when the baby is about to come? How do the doctor’s know? When you take your childbirth class, you will probably spend a lot of time talking about the signs of impending labor, as well as the signs of labor progression so that you will have a good idea of where you are each step of the way. Each stage of labor … Continue reading →

PUPPP (Pruritic Urticarial Papules and Plaques of Pregnancy)

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Can you imagine having a rash that is so itchy that it keeps you from sleeping and you end up inducing labor because of it? For some women with extreme cases of PUPPP, that is what happens. PUPPP stands for pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy, and it is a common pregnancy related rash that usually occurs during the third trimester of a first-time pregnancy. Although the rash is harmless, it can be very annoying and it may even disrupt sleep. It usually develops on the belly first and can spread to other parts of the body. It is … Continue reading →

Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV

The World Health Organization is working hard to reduce the number of pregnant mothers around the world who pass HIV on to their unborn children. HIV is not automatically passed from mother to unborn child. This is good news! But there is always a chance that the disease will be transmitted. The main way to prevent transmission is through the use of antiretroviral drugs. What are antiretroviral drugs? These are medications taken to treat infection by retroviruses like HIV… which opens up another question: what are retroviruses? A retrovirus is a virus that inserts itself into a host cell and … Continue reading →