Want to know more about cannabis medicines and women’s health? A free webinar for the general public and professional care-givers is being held on Tuesday 3 August.
According to the organisers, “It is widely understood that the current model of medicine has largely ignored the complexity of the female body. Women’s pain is not acted on as quickly, and many conditions present differently in women than in men, and take longer to diagnose. Women can end up living with symptoms for many years before they are correctly diagnosed and treated.
“Increasingly women are finding that cannabis-based medicines can be the key to managing either their or their children’s chronic health conditions.”
The panel is comprised of four women active in this field:
Hannah Deacon is an award-winning campaigner on access to medical cannabis. She ran a campaign in 2017-18 with the lobby group End Our Pain, for access to medical cannabis on the NHS for her son Alfie. Alfie’s doctors received the first first permanent schedule one licence to prescribe medical cannabis on the NHS for him in June 2018. Hannah continues to campaign for people to have access to medical cannabis treatments on the NHS. She is an executive director of the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, a director of Maple Tree Consultancy, and the co-founder and vice chair of Medcan Support, which supports parents and carers of children who require cannabis medicines to manage their conditions.
Gillian Flood is a patient advocate, and a member of the Patient Led Engagement for Access patient working group. She has found that prescribed medical cannabis has brought her relief from the mental and physical health problems from which she suffers.
Dr Sally Ghazaleh is a pain management consultant at the Whittington Hospital, and the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery, London. She also prescribes cannabis-based medicines and is the Women’s Pain Expert at Integro Medical Clinics. She specialises in patients suffering pain in the lower back, neck and abdomen, pain caused by cancer or post-stroke, neuropathic pain, complex regional pain syndrome, and fibromyalgia. She has a particular interest in bladder and abdominal pain in women, and women’s health in general.
Sarah Higgins is a clinical nurse specialist who has worked in the NHS for over ten years, and is the women’s health lead at non-profit organisation CPASS Nurses Arm. The organisation’s focus is on improving health, clinical outcomes and patient experience, through building nursing and midwifery leadership capacity to make significant improvements to the cannabinoid patient care environment. She developed an interest in medical cannabis and its use in women’s health following the implementation of routine screening for recreational drug-use in sexual and reproductive health services. Ms Higgins identified a trend in which women were often self-medicating with cannabis for hormone-related difficulties.
This webinar is the second in a series of four, organised by Cannabis Health Magazine, Integro Medical Clinics and Cannabis Patients Advocacy and Support Services. It will explore the experiences of mothers and their children whose conditions are managed with cannabis medicines.
The webinar is free. You can register here.