This chapter is not only about progress. It is about power, harm, resistance and organizing. Part 4 continues next Saturday. What does this history reveal about power in healthcare? #WomenInMedicine #HealthEquity #MedicalHistory 🧵 7/7

Bodily autonomy became a national movement. Roe v. Wade, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the National Women’s Health Network all reflected a larger fight for control, safety and voice. 🧵 6/7

Innovation without meaningful consent is not equity. The Relf sisters’ case exposed forced sterilization. Women of All Red Nations and other activists demanded accountability. 🧵 5/7

Medical progress carried a cost. Henrietta Lacks’ cells transformed biomedical research. Early birth control pills were tested on women in Puerto Rico, many without meaningful information about the risks.  🧵 4/7

Women led through injustice. Dr. Kazue Togasaki was detained at Tanforan during WWII. While incarcerated, she provided medical care and advocated for pregnant people held there. Care continued, even inside injustice. 🧵 3/7

In 1916, the nation’s first birth control clinic opened in Brooklyn. It provided reproductive health education, was shut down after 10 days and helped fuel the reproductive rights movement. 🧵 2/7

Knowledge about women’s bodies did not become power on its own. Women demanded it. Part 3 of 250 Years of Women Changing Medicine is about information, prevention, consent, access and voice. 🧵 1/7

Thank you, Arpita Gupta DePalma, MD, for this reminder. This is what “You Belong Here” means. 🧵 4/4 #WomenInMedicine

That is why community matters. We need spaces where #womeninmedicine can show up not just as physicians, but as people.  🧵 2/5

We asked our community: What does “You Belong Here” mean to you? This answer feels like a deep exhale for anyone who has ever loved medicine and still felt alone inside it. 🧵 1/5  #womeninmedicine

Thank you, Katie Godburn Schubert, President & CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research for putting words to something so many women in medicine have felt. This is why these conversations matter. 🧵4/4 #WomenInMedicine

But the story doesn’t end there. Women have always shaped medicine anyway — by asking better questions, naming what was missing and refusing to accept “that’s just how it is” as the final answer. 🧵3/4

Not the research. Not always the training. Not always the timelines. Not always the rooms where decisions are made. And once you see that, you can’t unsee it. 🧵2/4

We asked: What does “You Belong Here” mean to you? For Katie Godburn Schubert, President & CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research, it starts with a truth we do not talk about enough: Medicine was not always built with women in mind. 🧵1/4

Who’s got your six? 🪖 Join Women in Medicine® for Rally Point: Mentoring Across Career Transitions — a virtual group discussion for women physicians and trainees with any military connection, past, present or future on Aug. 13. All are welcome! 🔗 zurl.co/1KUPe

This chapter is not just about “firsts.” It is about women changing who could enter medicine, who received care and whose knowledge counted. Part 3 continues next Saturday. What does this history reveal about who gets remembered? 🧵7/7

Women also pushed medicine beyond hospital walls. They brought care into homes, connected racial justice to community health and organized against exclusion from training, leadership and professional societies.  🧵6/7

Access did not happen by accident. After Emma Reynolds was denied admission to nursing school, Provident Hospital and Training School helped open pathways for Black nurses and physicians. At Johns Hopkins, women philanthropists made equal admission a condition of funding. 🧵5/7

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte became the doctor her community was denied. After seeing a Native woman die because a white government doctor refused to treat her, she became a physician and later served more than 1,200 people across a 1,350-square-mile reservation. 🧵4/7

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler did more than become the first Black woman in the U.S. to earn an MD. In 1883, she urged women to ask questions about their care: “Surely if women ask no questions of the doctors, no answers will be given.” 🧵3/7

In 1848, Boston Female Medical College opened with 12 students and two instructors. But the school was not founded out of gender equality. Its founder believed male physicians attending childbirth was “unnatural.” Progress was real. So were its limits.  🧵2/7

The doors to medicine did not simply open for women. They were pushed. Funded. Fought for. And sometimes opened for reasons that were anything but equal. Part 2 of 250 Years of Women Changing Medicine is here. 🧵1/7

Women were never absent from medicine. They were often absent from its history. What part of women’s medical history was missing from your education? #WomenInMedicine #Freedom250 #MedicalHistory

This will not be a highlight reel. We’ll celebrate progress, name the barriers and tell the stories too often left out of the official record. 2/3

America is turning 250. We’re marking the moment by looking at the women who helped shape the nation’s health, often without the recognition they deserved. 1/3 🧵

6/6 Women do not need another lecture about budgeting or resilience. They need a healthcare system they can afford. Closing this gap will take action across healthcare, workplaces, policy and financial institutions.

5/6 The fear is rising with the costs. Since 2021, concern about affording prescriptions jumped from 30% to 42%. Concern about paying for needed care rose from 42% to 51%.

4/6 Think a higher income guarantees affordable care? Nearly 1 in 3 adults earning $120K–$179K were not Cost Secure. Even among households earning $180K+, nearly 1 in 5 still struggled.

3/6 Here is the number that stopped us: Only 42% of women were “Cost Secure,” compared with 57% of men. That 15-point divide is the widest recorded since tracking began in 2021.

2/6 The crisis is growing. In 2025, an estimated 2.8 million more Americans reported being unable to afford healthcare than in 2024. That is not a blip. It is a warning.