Episode 63: Biotech and Women’s Health – Insights from Key Opinion Leaders at the EmpowerUS Gulf South Symposium

In this episode, you'll learn more about the Empower Us Gulf South Women's Health Symposium. Don't miss this opportunity to engage with some of the leading voices in women's health. You're listening to Bio from the Bayou, empowering biotech leaders with the tools, assets, and expertise to improve healthcare outcomes. Each episode provides insights and information to expand your network, advance your product line, and help your company thrive. Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Hi everyone and welcome. I'm Sharon Courtney, Vice President for Government Relations at Tulane. Today we have a special episode featuring not one but two incredible guests, Ellen Palmentier and Dr. Hedwynne Brooks. Ellen is Tulane's Director of State and Federal Relations, and Hedwynne is the professor and chair of the Department of Physiology at Tulane School of Medicine. And we're here today to talk about upcoming event Empower Us, a symposium on women's health. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you.

Tedwynne, let's start with the big picture. Can you share a bit about the Empower Us Symposium, what inspired it, what it aims to achieve, and why the focus on women's health in the Gulf South?

Yes. So in the 2 years that I've been chair of physiology at Tulane, it's been really interesting to share our research on menopause with women who are entering perimenopause and menopause. And it's really important for the women in that age group to understand the kind of disease risk that they're at over the next 10 years. And whether that's conversations over happy hours or in seminars and lectures, it became really obvious to me that we needed to highlight the amazing research being done in the Deep South between the states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and why this is so important, not only for younger women and women who are well past the age of menopause, but that group of women that are in that age between 40 and 55 that are going to go through menopause and all the health issues that start. So that's why the Deep South, it's really all women, but we really want to bring together this conglomeration of fabulous research and highlight it to the public at this time to say, hey, this is happening right here in the Deep South, and you can get the information and the cutting-edge technology that you need.

The symposium has a wide range of topics from preeclampsia to menopause to social determinants of health. How did you decide on which focus areas you wanted to have at the symposium?

Well, for the Deep South, preeclampsia is a huge risk factor. We have the highest rates of preeclampsia between these 3 states. So that was an obvious one because the health of the mother whilst giving birth and whilst being pregnant is very important to the outcomes of the child and to the mother. But then there's a lot of emerging research in Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama between these institutions. In that area. One of the areas that is perhaps unknown to most people is that the risk of Alzheimer's is 3 times higher in women as we age. And I think that is a really important area to look at. And we're going to have a couple of speakers who are going to address that during the symposium. Social determinants of health is a strong focus of the public health school here in Tulane. So again, that came from the collaborators and colleagues that I'd met over the last 2 years. And then we also leaned on the colleagues at UAB to identify researchers who are doing social determinants of health in different states with addiction in women, child maternal health, access to dietary needs and things like that. And really to be a broad topic because it's not just cancer that impacts women. Cardiovascular disease actually is the number one killer of women's health.

So we're going to have people talking about the risk factors for Yeah, and for better and for worse, our culture is one that really signals a need for having that conversation about the social determinants of health.

Absolutely, and just the fabulous food in New Orleans. It's delicious, but it's got a lot of salt. And, you know, if we understand that, we can then mitigate our risk, right, against hypertension and cardiovascular disease. So, you know, we're not gonna give up the good food, but we do have to realize that maybe we have to do something, you know, and drink more water or exercise. And women tend to put themselves last, right? on the back burner when it comes to their own health. They look after their families first. So I think it's important to get the message out there that there are things we can do, and there's certain risks that impact us from teenage years, right? From osteoporosis risk. It depends on your nutritional status when you're young. So I think there's so much to learn, and we really want to make it interesting and exciting, not just for scientists, but for the public so that they can get this information.

One of your areas of expertise, of course, is menopause and its related health complications, and you'll be talking about that at the symposium. Can you share a preview of your session and discuss how, despite menopause finally getting its moment in the sun publicly, it remains a crucial yet historically overlooked stage in women's health?

Absolutely. So my motto is, and you guys have heard this, is menopause, if it's not your problem, it will be. Because everyone has a friend, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, Someone that they know, and everyone goes through menopause unless you pass away, right? So my area of research is looking at the impact of those 10 to 15 years when we transition from cycling regularly to menopause and through perimenopause on hypertension and diabetes risk. So that's gonna be some of my message and some of the important things about drug medications that you take and the risk factors for women that take those, the sort of side effects of the Regular hypertension drugs, high blood pressure drugs. And remember that most drugs were tested in a population clinical trials that didn't determine if they were male or female or women or men, and therefore everything was pooled together. And so many of the drugs between '97 and 2000 were removed off the shelf by the FDA because of side effects in women, because we didn't separate the sexes when we tested them. So I think For menopause, that's critical, right? Because now our disease risk goes up, and we really need to focus on that area of research and say, what is the risk factor for a woman going through menopause to get diabetes or high blood pressure? So, it has been overlooked, but we're spreading the message, people are talking about it, and I think there's a lot of hope for treatments in the next few years.

Yeah, I think we've had the conversation before about hormone replacement therapy and the bad rap it got. I don't know if you wanna talk a little bit about that.

Yes, unfortunately, there was a study that was done 20 years ago almost now. And it basically pooled all women of 50-year-olds with 75-year-olds and gave them all estrogen. And the sort of myth came out of that, that estrogen was bad. And I think we're now understanding that it's not bad. Obviously, it's a choice for everyone to take it or not, but I think we understand that it can be protective now if you take it young, early in perimenopause, and that it'll help a lot of the side effects, a lot of the cardiovascular risk, diabetes risk. But the biggest myth or misconception that I want to debunk in the few months or years is that menopause is not an aging disease. You go through menopause at 50 years old. And if I asked everyone to say if 60 was old, most people would say no. Well, 50 isn't old. So it's not, it's a young, a middle, not a young person, but a middle-aged person's disease, but it's certainly not an aging disease and we shouldn't treat it like one. So a 75-year-old woman is very different to a 50-year-old woman. And so hormone replacement at 50— doesn't have the risks that it does if you take it at 75.

It's not a disease.

Well, that's true. That's true. Someone asked me, oh, I won't say that. It feels like it sometimes when you're going through it.

The symposium emphasizes environmental and social determinants of health. Ellen, can you share how these factors are shaping women's health outcomes in the Gulf South? Maybe give us an example of something people might not realize has had such a significant impact.

Sure. So environmental and Social determinants of health play a crucial role in women's health in the Gulf South. This is a region that's uniquely vulnerable to environmental challenges and social disparities. So these determinants encompass a wide range of factors, including air and water quality, housing conditions, access to healthcare, socioeconomic status, and educational opportunities. One thing that I find is very important for all three of our states—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama—is is how rural we are. Mississippi is— over half the population is rural, and just under half the population of both Louisiana and Alabama are rural. So access to healthcare becomes a huge issue, and that's an issue that can lead to delayed diagnosis and also delayed treatment. One of the things that I'm really excited about for Empower Us is we have a strong focus on alcohol use in women this year. There has been a lot of talk about increased alcohol use during and following the pandemic, particularly among women. But we know, as with most health-related research, much of the research on alcohol use is focused on men. But women metabolize alcohol differently than men, often leading to higher blood alcohol concentrations, greater sensitivity to alcohol's effects, and this can result in increased health risks even at lower levels of consumption. So I'm really looking forward to hearing about the research that our colleagues across the Gulf South are doing into One of the other highlights we're looking forward to at the symposium is a federal policy roundtable.

We've invited Congresswoman Julia Letlow and Senators Katie Britt and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. What can attendees expect from this discussion, and do you think we're at a turning point for meaningful policy change in women's health?

I'm really excited about this roundtable. I think it's a pivotal time for us to be having this with senators, Britt and Hyde-Smith and with Congresswoman Letlow. The discussion's going to likely focus on recent policy changes such as updates to reproductive health regulations, funding from women's health research, and initiatives aimed at reducing health disparities. I'm excited to hear what they think are going to be our future challenges and any sort of upcoming legislation that they have in mind that could help to bring some more funding to women's research and just some more awareness into women's health research. Recent years, we've seen some significant legislative efforts aimed at improving women's health. We had the Maternal Health Quality Improvement Act and some increased funding into women's health research. It's just a drop in the bucket, though, and I think that it'll be great to have these legislators there so they can tell us the best way to advocate for more research into women's healthcare.

And that's going to be especially important to our audience members this year because of the new administration coming in.

Exactly.

Hedwynn and Ellen, if you could pick one thing attendees leave with after these 2 days, What would it be? How do you hope they'll apply what they learned to improve women's health in the region?

If it was one thing that I could hope for is that the women in the audience, when they go next to see their medical care provider, when they're given a medication for whatever they're given it for, they say, hey, what dose do I take? Is this a dose for men? I'm a 110-pound woman. Is this a 200-pound man's dose? Because toxicity of drugs for women is very different. And just to be aware that our conditions are very different. And be aware if you're 40 and you're not sleeping well and you're feeling unmotivated in life, that you might be going through perimenopause. So go talk to your doctor, talk to your friends, talk to your mother, your daughters, you know, or ask your mother, what age did you go through menopause? If they know. For the women out there, just be aware if this change in how you feel between 40 and 45, it is real. And it's actually, you know, a transition into menopause and it's treatable and you can do something about it.

I agree. I really think that giving women a voice is a huge part of this symposium. It's letting them know about their health and that it is different from a man's, and that you have a voice and you can use that voice to talk to your doctor. You can use that voice to talk to your legislators. You can advocate for yourself and for other women and other people.

So while Tulane will be very well represented at the symposium, there are other institutions involved as well. Can you both tell us who the other institutions we can expect to see here are?

University of Alabama Birmingham, one of the biggest medical schools in, in the Gulf South. University of Southern Alabama, University Medical Center Mississippi, Pennington, Louisiana State Health, LSU, and of course Tulane.

Great. Ellen and Hedwynn, thank you so much for joining us today. To our listeners, don't forget to check out the Empower Us Gulf South Women's Health Symposium happening in New Orleans December 12th and 13th. As always, we'll have all the details for the symposium, as well as Ellen and Hedwynne's contact information and links in the show notes. Don't miss this opportunity to engage with some of the leading voices in women's health. Thanks again for tuning in. Thanks for joining us for Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again. To never miss the latest updates in biotech, hit the subscribe button now. We'll catch you on our next episode of Bio from the Bayou.