Having a chronic condition

Women experience chronic conditions differently to men.

INFORMATION DEVELOPED FOR ACT WOMEN
Women’s Health Matters has developed the following information resources for ACT women.
Chronic Conditions
Borderline in the ACT
ACT Women’s Health Hub (Women’s Health)
ACT Women’s Health Hub (Resources)

Chronic conditions contribute to over 70% of Australia’s total disease burden. Chronic disease is long lasting and debilitating, and women’s greater longevity means that they are more likely than men to live with disability and to be more affected by long-term and chronic illness. They are also more likely than men to have multiple chronic conditions, and to experience coexisting mental and physical illness.

Increasingly, younger women are being diagnosed with long-term conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, and autoimmune diseases which occur far more in women than men.

And women experience chronic conditions differently to men, due to gendered differences – in how they access health services and supports, their life roles, their biology, genetic and hormonal makeup, the way they experience pain and the conditions that they have.

The Canberra context

The ACT’s population is ageing, and because ACT women live longer than men, they are more likely than men to live with disability and chronic conditions. This has a large personal cost because this means that they will use health services and medicines more frequently, and over a longer period of time.

But there has been a gap in understanding how the experience of chronic conditions might differ between ACT men and women, and in understanding the needs of ACT women who are experiencing the onset of chronic conditions.

So, in 2018 Women’s Health Matters undertook qualitive research to explore the views and experiences of ACT younger women with chronic diseases. The report found that:

Younger ACT women who experienced chronic conditions were more likely to have conditions that are not caused by lifestyle factors (top three – mental health, autoimmune conditions, musculoskeletal diseases).
71% of the younger women with chronic conditions had fair, poor, or very poor self-rated health.
61% of younger women experienced more than one chronic disease, and experienced poorer health than those who only had one disease.
Younger ACT women experienced symptoms of their chronic disease which adversely impacted how they structured their lives and their ability to participate in normal activities.

Our research about women’s barriers and enablers to healthy eating and physical activity found that:

Women who had chronic diseases valued the ability to participate in physical activity and eat healthily, but chronic disease negatively impacted their ability to do so.
Affordability and other factors were barriers – for example to specialised assistance or food which can be expensive.
Women overcame these barriers to healthy eating and physical activity by finding work arounds or life hacks.

Our series of reports on how ACT women experience health and wellbeing and access health services, supports and information all showed that chronic conditions are one of the top three health issues.

What we are doing about it

In the early years of Women’s Centre for Health Matters, we were involved in improving women’s health and wellbeing by helping to provide health and wellbeing information via peer support and with our extensive library.

Throughout the years Women’s Centre for Health Matters since then we have provided health and wellbeing information for women with chronic conditions via information on our website and social media as well as specialised information such as Borderline in the ACT.

And we have worked since the early 1990s on Endometriosis, and were part of the Canberra Endometriosis Network which informed the delivery of the national response to this important women’s health issue.

We have also supported the Canberra Endometriosis Network with access to our facilities for their meetings on a regular basis and by hosting information nights over the years exploring the impacts of living with the illness endometriosis. We also supported local artist Margaret Kalms to launch her photographic project Life with Endometriosis.

WCHM has supported the ACT Women and Mental Health Working Group (WMHWG) which has been meeting since August 2007 and was formed to provide a regular forum in which ACT women living with mental health issues and supportive service providers could come together and consider current issues. WCHM used the results of the Group’s discussions to inform joint submissions to relevant consultations. The WMHWG also commissioned work from WCHM to document specific issues and stories for women with mental health issues in the ACT.

From our research WCHM identified the need for a resource that allowed women, their families and friends, and service providers to access local information that would assist them to understand BPD and to identify local services that can assist in the recovery from BPD was identified. As a result we developed Borderline in the ACT to assist women living with BPD and their supporters, and service providers to access reliable and local information.