Is it possible to ensure gender equity in care? To find an answer to this question, the Confcooperative in collaboration with the Commission for women cooperative managers, Confcooperative Sanità e Health Cooperationorganized a meeting on gender medicine today at the Palazzo della Cooperation in Rome “Equal but not Equal”. Respecting the difference between men and women in carrying out medical-scientific research, diagnosis, prevention, up to specific treatments, is a choice that not only improves people’s quality of life but helps them heal sooner and get sick less. An innovative medical approach, tailor-made for the patient, which could make an important contribution in limiting female mortality. In Italy, in fact, Among women alone, there are over 35 thousand deaths per year from diseases that could be preventable. A central theme, that of prevention, which sees Italy in fourteenth place among European countries in terms of investments in health spending compared to GDP. The commitment of attention to the person and in fighting the gender gap also on the health level, it was started some time ago by Confcooperative.
«More than 60% of our associates’ workforce is female», she underlines Anna Manca, president of the Women Cooperators Executive Commission and vice-president of Confcooperative. «Confcooperative’s growing attention to equal opportunities in the working environment is strengthened by its commitment to the topic of gender medicine. A cultural change even before a scientific oneto which we want to make our contribution by making available the experience of these years of the Commission for women cooperative managers with an information, awareness and prevention action based on the promotion of appropriate lifestyles, with early diagnosis through targeted screening campaigns and with adequate care”.
It is precisely on prevention and personalized treatments that the cooperative system focuses. «Gender medicine is a fundamental approach that brings together the law of gender equality and the topic of prevention and treatment», he declares Michele Odorizzi, president of Cooperation Health. «An approach that gives us a more equal society and makes every health-oriented path more effective. 70% of those enrolled in our supplementary health plans are women: with them in mind, we have created a protection area for pregnancy and maternity, but not only. Our healthcare network, which includes 3,600 facilities, boasts excellent experiences and projects on the topic of gender medicine».
A new medical approach that has an important ally in socio-health cooperation, given that every day it is committed to supporting seven million citizens in various healthcare contexts, starting from their homes. Thanks to a network of professionals in the sector (doctors, pharmacists, rehabilitators, nurses, psychiatrists, therapists, among others) and particular attention to situations of greatest fragility and vulnerability, health and social cooperatives are an effective vehicle for promoting medicine gender at the heart of communities, ensuring that no one is overlooked.
«The synergy between the medical-scientific sector, social and healthcare cooperatives and integrative mutuality plays a key role in realizing our vision in Confcooperative: transforming the approach to health and improving the quality of care in the area, taking into account the individual needs and peculiarities”, adds the president of Confcooperative Sanità, Giuseppe Milanese. «Our aim is to promote a personalized health model. An approach that does not limit itself to considering the pathology, but also includes gender, age, personal history and social context.”