By: Founder, Hannah Hui and Cofounder, Arrielle Norton

You’re walking into a doctor’s office, having felt something was wrong inside of your body – persistent fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, but you are told by your doctor that it is just anxiety and you’re overthinking it. Five years later, you are diagnosed with PCOS, thyroid disorder, cervical cancer, or cardiovascular disease, not to mention that metastatic cancer rates are much higher in black and brown families. This is the reality for about 12 million Americans. This common ongoing theme of misdiagnoses in America is not a rarity. According to NIH’s Time to Diagnose Endometriosis: Current Status, Challenges and Regional Characteristics—A Systematic Literature Review by Corte et al. (October 2024), women with endometriosis don’t receive an accurate diagnosis for up to 7 to 10 years, whilst suffering from an excruciatingly painful condition. Women who experience a heart attack are 3 to 7 times more likely to have their symptoms misdiagnosed and be sent home than men. Women with autism spectrum disorder are more likely to be missed in childhood or misdiagnosed, as research criteria have historically surrounded male patterns of behavior. Additionally, amongst women who’ve reported chronic pain, research demonstrates that they are less likely to be given adequate pain medication than men. 

At the heart of all women’s diagnostic disparities is a woman who was not heard or listened to; our voices are being dismissed. We as a society have acclimated to the normalization of women’s voices being overlooked, in addition to the cries of black and brown women’s pain. All women, especially those belonging to the world’s most vulnerable groups, deserve to be seen, heard, and have their stories shared. When patients experience neglect from their medical physician, this fosters a relationship of distrust, criticism, and low confidence in themselves and in the medical system. Having a physician who prioritizes your care, is an active listener, and empowers you, in a medical world that has been historically broken through misdiagnoses and inequity, is healing physically, emotionally, and mentally. Women Interrupted is about rewriting the narrative of misdiagnoses, access to health/mental health resources and treatment, and providing a platform for the voices of those overlooked to be heard and uplifted. We see light through promoting the stories of family members who have lost important women in their lives due to a failed medical system. In the cracks of a broken medical system, we see the light for increased care and diligence for women. 

Women Interrupted is a play on words. We are claiming our voices as women to not only advocate for ourselves, but for those of all demographics. We believe it is important to make our voices heard to provide valuable, lesser-known medical knowledge in order to save lives and advocate for a basic human right to quality life when medical care falls short. Our organization, Women Interrupted, was started by young premed students pursuing careers as physicians, who see the amount of misdiagnoses as a systemic failure as a call to action and want to highlight the importance of women’s health, mental health, access to healthcare, and the intersectionality of various health related topics primarily affecting women and men of color today.