A Life Dedicated to Fighting Inequality and Improving Health Care for Women
Gloria Bachmann, the director of the Women’s Health Institute at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, is a nationally recognized authority
"There are trends in health care that are having an adverse effect on access, and this is especially true for women and their reproductive health care needs.”– Gloria Bachmann
Before the Women’s Marches and the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements made headlines and brought issues of women's rights back to the forefront, Rutgers scholars had been working for decades as ardent advocates through their research, teaching and outreach. Over the next several weeks, Rutgers Today will be highlighting many of the women whose work is making a noticeable impact. This article is the second in our series:
Long before she became an ob-gyn, or earned a master of medical science from Rutgers Medical School, or enrolled in Rutgers as an undergraduate, Gloria A. Bachmann was drawn to medicine. As a 14-year-old, she happily spent her Saturdays at a local hospital, volunteering as a candy striper. “I knew I wanted to be involved in medicine and use science to help people,” she says.
As a nationally recognized authority on women’s health and as the director of the Women’s Health Institute at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS), Bachmann is in a unique position to do so. The institute furthers its mission—to advance health care for women throughout New Jersey, the nation, and the world—through clinical trials, community outreach, educational programs, and professional mentoring. And Bachmann’s influence extends well beyond the institute. At RWJMS, she’s a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences. As an expert in the areas of midlife and menopausal health and sexual function, she’s contributed more than 400 articles to the medical canon, spoken widely on women’s health care, and been involved in a variety of programs to further the cause she originally embraced as an adolescent: using science to help people.
As someone who’s spent her life promoting women’s health, she’s deeply concerned about inequalities in our current health care system. “There are trends in health care,” she says, “that are having an adverse effect on access, and this is especially true for women and their reproductive health care needs.” She notes that, of all the factors influencing women’s access to health care, the greatest may be geography—though race and socioeconomics also play a significant role. In fact, the 20 percent of Americans who live in rural areas are served by only 10 percent of the nation’s physicians, and only 6 percent of America’s ob-gyns. “In these areas,” Bachmann says, “around 4,000 additional primary care physicians are needed to meet current health care needs.” She’s particularly troubled by the fact that 77 percent of the 2,050 rural counties in the United States are designated as health professional shortage areas.
But even with a sufficient supply of practitioners, health care for women living near and below the poverty line would still be in jeopardy. That’s because Medicaid, the joint state and federal program that pays for the health care of Americans with limited incomes (and roughly half of all obstetric deliveries in the United States), has already been cut in some states and is in danger of even deeper cuts by the federal government. “You would do a great disservice to low-income and underserved women by taking away their only source of health insurance,” she says.
To that end, Bachmann notes, Rutgers is working to ensure equality of access to women’s health care in its own system. RWJMS, she explains, along with its health care partner RWJBarnabas Health, is making sure that all its teaching hospitals hew to the same high standard. “We meet regularly and institute evidence-based protocols,” she says, “so that wherever you deliver your baby, you still get the same care and the same type of interventions that any woman would demand.”
Bachmann is helping to ensure that pregnant patients aren’t just treated equally regardless of geography but also that they receive optimal care. She was instrumental in the development of an initiative aimed at empowering women during pregnancy and the birth process. The “Stop. Look. Listen!” campaign is a response to the country’s rising rate of maternal mortality—from 7.2 deaths for every 100,000 live births in 1987 to 20 per 100,000 in 2018—and to the tendency, on the part of some physicians, to downplay symptoms that could signal more serious problems. The initiative urges health care providers to pay attention to their pregnant patients’ concerns, rather than dismiss them as a vagary of pregnancy.
The commitment that Bachmann manifests to women’s well-being is reflected in a growing list of awards and accolades, including the New Jersey Academy of Medicine’s Educator Award, the Hemophilia Association of New Jersey’s Humanitarian Award, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s President’s Community Service Award, and, her most treasured, the World of Women award from the Delaware-Raritan Girl Scout Council. “That I can try and be a role model,” she says, “and reach out and help and guide young women, and men, is my greatest achievement.”
Indeed, she considers herself an educator first and foremost, and it’s not surprising that a video she helped create for women with chronic gynecologic pain was recognized as a superb teaching tool by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In addition to teaching at the medical school, she’s mentored ob-gyn residents, medical students, and Ph.D. candidates working on clinical trials. “I really believe,” she says, “that teaching the next generation of physicians is the most important and satisfying work I do.”
Read the Rutgers Magazine #WeToo story profiling Rutgers scholars here.