PRINTER'S NO. 1712
No. 163 Session of 2002
INTRODUCED BY C. WILLIAMS, MURPHY, SCHWARTZ, COSTA, KITCHEN,
KUKOVICH, BOSCOLA, MUSTO, STOUT, WAGNER, LAVALLE, LOGAN,
TARTAGLIONE AND RHOADES, FEBRUARY 11, 2002
REFERRED TO RULES AND EXECUTIVE NOMINATIONS, FEBRUARY 11, 2002
A RESOLUTION
1 Expressing the sense of the Senate in regard to women's health
2 issues.
3 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania received a grade of "F" in "Making the
4 Grade on Women's Health: A National and State-by-State Report
5 Card," the first comprehensive assessment of women's health,
6 which was published in August 2000 by the University of
7 Pennsylvania School of Medicine's FOCUS on Health & Leadership
8 for Women, the National Women's Law Center and The Lewin Group;
9 and
10 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania ranked 32nd out of the 50 states and
11 the District of Columbia; and
12 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania met only three of the 25 measures of
13 women's health status: the percentage of women receiving
14 mammograms (77.3%), the rate of women dying from lung cancer
15 (25.8 per 100,000) and the rate of women with AIDS (7.7 per
16 100,000); and
17 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania failed to meet any of the national
1 goals for women's access to health care services; and
2 WHEREAS, In Pennsylvania, 12% of women do not have health
3 insurance, 5.6% of people live in medically underserved areas
4 and nearly 16% of women do not receive first-trimester prenatal
5 care; and
6 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania failed to meet all but one of the
7 national goals that address wellness and prevention; and
8 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania was ranked 37th in the nation for the
9 percentage of women receiving Pap smears (83.8%) and the number
10 of women receiving colorectal cancer screening (35.1%); and
11 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania did particularly poorly in several
12 measures of preventive activities known to reduce the risk of
13 illness and disease; ranking 40th for the percentage of women
14 not participating in leisure-time physical activity (35.9%),
15 41st for the percentage of women who are overweight (33.9%) and
16 43rd for the percentage of women who smoke (23.5%); and
17 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania failed to meet all but two of the
18 national goals for key health conditions, diseases and causes of
19 death for women; and
20 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania had the 35th highest rate of women
21 dying from heart disease (105.3 per 100,000 women), a rate which
22 was particularly high for African-American women (145.8 per
23 100,000 women); and
24 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania had the 44th highest rate of women
25 dying from breast cancer (21.6 per 100,000 women), the 38th
26 highest percentage of women with diabetes (6.0%), the 36th
27 highest rate of women with AIDS (7.7 per 100,000 women) and the
28 30th highest percentage of women with chlamydia (5.9%); and
29 WHEREAS, Pennsylvania failed to meet any of the national
30 goals indicating that women live in a healthy community: the
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1 life expectancy for women in Pennsylvania is 78.66 years, nearly
2 2.5 years less than Hawaii, the state with the highest life
3 expectancy; and
4 WHEREAS, The life expectancy for women in Pennsylvania was
5 particularly low for African-American women (73.02 years) and
6 women of other racial and ethnic minorities (73.78 years); and
7 WHEREAS, The assessment reflects that 11.9% of women in
8 Pennsylvania live in poverty, and the percentage of minority
9 women living in poverty was particularly high: 28.9% of African-
10 American women, 23.2% of Hispanic women, 25.3% of Asian-American
11 women and 30% of Native American women; and
12 WHEREAS, Women in Pennsylvania earn only 71.2 cents for every
13 dollar earned by men, and only 83.5% of women in Pennsylvania
14 graduated from high school; and
15 WHEREAS, Hispanic women in Pennsylvania had the lowest high
16 school graduation rate, 64.2%; and
17 WHEREAS, Of the 71 State-level women's health policies
18 reviewed, Pennsylvania has enacted less than a third; and
19 WHEREAS, The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has yet to adopt
20 many important policies to provide the uninsured with insurance
21 coverage, to provide needed health services to those who do not
22 have them, to promote critical health screening and other
23 preventative health programs and to insure that women live in a
24 safe and healthy community; therefore be it
25 RESOLVED, That it is the sense of the Senate that:
26 (1) The health and well-being of every woman living in
27 this Commonwealth is important.
28 (2) The Commonwealth through the Department of Health
29 must do more to promote the health of women, including
30 policies that are beneficial to women's health, the
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1 establishment of an Office on Women's Health, the creation of
2 new women's health programs, greater investment in existing
3 women's health programs that have proven successful and a
4 greater emphasis on data collection and research related to
5 women's health.
6 (3) The Commonwealth through the Department of Health
7 should initiate efforts to meet the Healthy People 2010
8 standards promulgated by the United States Department of
9 Health and Human Services and the measures of women's health
10 included in "Making the Grade on Women's Health: A National
11 and State-by-State Report Card";
12 and be it further
13 RESOLVED, That a copy of this resolution be sent to the
14 Governor, Mark Schweiker, to the Secretary of Health, Robert
15 Zimmerman, to the Physician General, Robert Muscalus, and to the
16 Commission for Women.
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