REMARKS BY: TOMMY G. THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES PLACE: National Council for Families & Television, Los Angeles, California DATE: January 25, 2002
Marcy (Carsey), it was a pleasure to meet you, and on behalf of the Tourism Department of the State of Wisconsin, thank you for the free advertising each week on "That `70s Show."
And I'd like to acknowledge Deputy Surgeon General Susan Blumenthal, who you will hear from a little bit later. Susan was the first Assistant Secretary for Women's Health at the department and has done so much to advance women's health in America.
It's a pleasure to be in Beverly Hills. I must say that while driving down Sunset Boulevard on the way here this morning, I couldn't help but think how far I am from my hometown of Elroy, Wisconsin . where we don't even have a "stop-and-go" light, as we like to call it.
In fact, Elroy is so small, it's the only place I know of where you can pick up the phone, dial a wrong number and still talk for half an hour.
Yes, Wisconsin is far different than California . and Washington, D.C. As some of you know, I was governor of Wisconsin for 14 years before I moved to Washington - a city I liked to call "Disneyland East" in many of my speeches.
Once President Bush hired me, my staff and the White House suggested I stop doing that - lest I offend anyone. And a year into the job, I have to say that they are right. So, I'm here today to say to the good folks at A-B-C . no offense. I never should have compared the fine people at Disney to what goes on back in Washington.
Today, I thank you for the opportunity to discuss what we in Washington and you in the television industry can do to work together to increase public awareness on the importance of women's health, to form a true partnership to build a healthy America.
First off, I must note that you - the writers, producers and creators of the many fine shows on television - have a powerful platform from which to spread the empowering message of women's health. And it's clear that television does an admirable job in portraying the vital role women play in the health of their families.
It's a message that often is the primary focus of an episode, such as a woman going to the doctor for a mammogram and the effect it has on her family. Or it can be a subtle point written into the plot, such as a mother picking up a prescription for her child or going to the doctor for an annual checkup.
Those direct or subtle messages deliver a powerful message: Healthy women mean healthy families, and healthy families mean healthy communities - a subject that my family and my department feel passionately about.
Building on that, I'd like to discuss the three P's of women's health - priorities, prevention and partnership. As in: women's health must be a top priority for families, communities, government and you in the television industry; we must prevent disease and illnesses by leading healthy lifestyles; and we must form partnerships to ensure our message reaches all Americans.
As a society, it is clear that we have begun to make women's health a top priority. We are in the midst of a revolution in women's health, a revolution that has brought new attitudes, awareness and an appreciation that women have some fundamentally different health needs that need to be addressed in their own right.
Clinical trials for treatments and pharmaceuticals no longer focus exclusively on men, television shows increasingly reflect the importance of women's health within families, and we have directed unprecedented amounts of money toward diseases and health conditions that predominantly affect women.
Working with President Bush, we at the Department of Health and Human Services have zeroed in on women's health from the day we came to office a year ago. That includes a $55 million increase in breast cancer research at the National Institutes of Health and a $44 million increase for substance abuse prevention and treatment programs for women.
We also have intensified our focus on the Office of Women's Health within my office, increasing the office's budget by more than 50 percent to better coordinate women's health activities, programs and research throughout all federal health agencies.
Today, I will give you a sneak peak into President Bush's 2003 budget. In it, we will request $180 million in funding for breast and cervical cancer screening - a $9 million increase for a program that has provided more than 2.7 million examinations to underserved women since it was created in 1990.
All told, this program has diagnosed more than 8,600 breast cancers, 39,400 precancerous cervical lesions and 660 cervical cancers. This truly is a federal program that works, and one that benefits women, their families and society as a whole.
In most states, the Medicaid program will cover cancer treatment for women without health insurance who are diagnosed with cancer though this screening program.
Nevertheless, we need to do more. Taken together, breast and cervical cancer took the lives of nearly 44,000 American women last year alone.
This is where the second "P" - prevention - comes in and the area where we all can play the greatest role. How many of those lives could have been saved if only the victims had gone to their doctors for an examination for early detection?
We need your help in spreading the word that taking care of yourself - eating right, exercising more and going to the doctor for checkups - can go a long way in preventing health problems down the road.
Together, we must strive to articulate the issues that every family must deal with - not just the life- threatening and heart-wrenching battles with cancer, but also the daily trips to the doctor, proper nutrition and the importance of exercise.
Overall, you all do this very effectively on a day-in and day-out basis - not just on hospital dramas such as "E-R," but also subtly on sitcoms such as "Everybody Loves Raymond," "According to Jim" and even the "Simpsons." Recent episodes of all of these shows, and so many others, delivered a clear message that women are vital to the health and well-being of their families.
I encourage you to keep it up and continue to stress the indisputable fact that a healthy diet and moderate amounts of exercise can improve quality of life by leaps and bounds. Not only will Americans feel better in the short term, their overall health will improve in the long term.
A healthy lifestyle and regular checkups can help prevent and, if necessary, detect countless conditions, and I'd like to talk about two that disproportionately affect women - cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading killer of women . and all too often it is not recognized because symptoms often show up differently in women than men. More than half a million women died of cardiovascular disease in one recent year alone - 60,000 more women than men.
There's an even greater disparity when it comes to osteoporosis. More than 8 million women in the United States have osteoporosis - and they are five times more likely than men to suffer from the disease. Five times.
But the thing is - and here I go again on prevention - it is preventable if certain measures are taken early enough in a young woman's life. And they are very simple - exercise more, take calcium and reduce your caffeine intake.
These truly are debilitating diseases. But if we make just modest changes in how much we eat and exercise, we can prevent so much illness and death - and save billions in health care costs. The more I study the issue, the more it becomes clear: If we truly want to keep health care costs down, we all must take better care of ourselves and our families.
I'd also like to mention one more area where you can play a major preventive role - your depiction of smoking on television. While the number of characters who smoke on television is infinitely smaller than it was when I was young, there still are too many people smoking too much on television.
Yes, sometimes it is necessary to incorporate smoking into plot lines. And, yes, sometimes smoking by a character can be used to deliver a powerful anti-smoking message. But, please, before you have a character smoke, think it through carefully.
Here's why: Our commitment to discourage smoking among women and girls as a society has never been stronger, but there are discouraging signs that our message is not getting through.
The Surgeon General's report on women and smoking concluded last year that although the prevalence of smoking among women is down significantly since 1965, that rate has declined very little since the early 1990s. More troublingly, the number of 18 to 24-year-olds who smoke has been climbing in recent years.
About 165,000 women die each year for smoking-related illnesses. That's 39 percent of all smoking-related deaths in the United States each year - a proportion that has more than doubled since the mid-1960s.
It is increasingly clear, we need your help in reaching our young women with a very simple message: Smoking is not glamorous. Smoking is deadly. We as a society must not glorify smoking. Ever.
The television industry and the federal government can be powerful partners in delivering that and so many other positive health messages to women and girls throughout America and around the world. We simply can't afford not to forge a partnership to save lives.
The full force of the Department of Health and Human Services is at your disposal. We have more than 60,000 employees around the country, including some of the greatest doctors and scientists in the world conducting groundbreaking research into diseases, health trends and drug discovery.
If you need facts on a certain disease or health topic, please contact my office, or the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control. We can supply you the information or expertise you need on everything from cancer to AIDS to eating disorders.
It is vital that the television industry provide accurate, up-to-date health messages. And you have no greater resource for those messages than my department.
While I'm offering our assistance, I must also warn that you may hear from me from time to time as I come up with some script ideas.
As secretary of Health and Human Services, I can directly impact policy by allocating money and creating programs. And I can use travel the country and use the bully pulpit to preach the importance of healthy women. But, quite frankly, I don't have the power and ability to connect with Americans that you do.
You, the television industry, can go straight into the living rooms of millions of families each and every night and deliver this simple message: Healthy women mean healthy families. Ultimately, that means television can help save lives by making women advocates for their own health - and, by extension, the health of their families and their communities.
Thank you very much, and we would now be happy to take questions.