Center seminar 30.10.23 on: Women’s Health, menopause, social security utilization and sustainable work participation
Associate professor Inger Haukenes and professor Silje Mæland present. Are YOU ready? Then bring your lunch box to meeting room 8.1-8.2 Laboratory building, Monday 30.10.23 @ 12-13. Coffee and tea will be served together with the Center cake. The event is open to all
Main content
Center for research on heart disease in women:
Reframing menopause: an interdisciplinary approach to women’s health and health care in the Norwegian Welfare State (MENO)
Speakers:
Associate professor Inger Haukenes, PT, PHD and Professor Silje Mæland, PT PhD
Every year 27500 women in Norway will enter the menopausal transition. Among them about 30% (8000) will experience severe health complaints caused by a reduction of the main female sex hormone estrogen. The health complaints range from mental health issues, musculoskeletal pain, joint stiffness, sleep deprivation, fatigue, headache, ‘brain fog’, asthma and severe hot flushes impacting women’s quality of life and potential for sustainable work participation. Yet, menopause is under-researched and under-theorized, poorly understood and stigmatized in the Norwegian welfare state.
Within the prevailing framing of menopause, women themselves and health care professionals may easily interpret menopausal health issues as typically women’s complaints driven by psychosocial stress and aging. Consequently, women may be offered therapy, medication and sick leave targeting other illnesses and thereby increasing the risk of prolonged symptom duration and delayed return to work. The overall aim of the MENO project is to address these challenges and contribute to improve health, health care, and sustainable work participation for women with menopausal health complaints.
Haukenes and Mæland will present ‘project MENO’.
Associate prof. Inger Haukenes shares her time between the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen, and The Research Unit for General Practice in NORCE. She is particularly engaged in women’s health, intersectionality and gender perspectives on social security utilization and sustainable work participation. She leads the research group of Work, Health and Gender. In NORCE she leads a comprehensive register study ‘The Norwegian GP-DEP study’, examining GP’s follow-up of people with depression and the relation to sustainable work participation.
Prof. Silje Mæland, shares her time between scientific and knowledge cluster work. She is a professor at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is a specialist in work and health research and is the leader of National Council for Work and Health, leader of the Academic Forum in Alrek Health Cluster, and head of Research and Development in Idrettsklynge Vest and the Sunnaas Foundation.
Mæland leads the Bergen in Change COVID-19 study, an Alrek Health Cluster research collaboration ( https://www.uib.no/igs/135092/bergen-i-endring-covid19-studien-bie-studien#publikasjoner )