BILL NUMBER: SCR 42	CHAPTERED
	BILL TEXT

	RESOLUTION CHAPTER  29
	FILED WITH SECRETARY OF STATE  APRIL 2, 2004
	ADOPTED IN ASSEMBLY  MARCH 30, 2004
	ADOPTED IN SENATE  JANUARY 28, 2004
	AMENDED IN SENATE  JANUARY 15, 2004

INTRODUCED BY   Senator Soto
   (Coauthors:  Senators Figueroa and Ortiz)

                        JUNE 30, 2003

   Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 42--Relative to women's health.


	LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


   SCR 42, Soto.  Women In Pain Awareness Month.
   This measure would recognize the important need to raise awareness
concerning gender disparity in pain assessment and treatment in the
United States, and would declare the month of February as Women In
Pain Awareness Month.




   WHEREAS, Research indicates that differences in men and women
exist in the experience of pain, with women experiencing and
reporting both more frequent and greater pain.  Yet, rather than
receiving greater, or, at least as effective treatment for their pain
as men, women are more likely to be less well treated than men for
their painful symptoms; and
   WHEREAS, There are numerous factors that contribute to this
undertreatment, but the literature supports the conclusion that there
are gender-based biases regarding women's pain experiences.  These
biases have led health care providers to discount women's self
reports of pain at least until there is objective evidence for the
pain's cause.  Medicine's focus on objective factors and its cultural
stereotypes of women combine insidiously to leave women at greater
risk for inadequate pain relief and continued suffering; and
   WHEREAS, Women have a higher prevalence of chronic pain syndromes
and diseases associated with chronic pain, such as fibromyalgia,
reflex sympathetic dystrophy, or osteoarthritis, than men, and women
are biologically more sensitive to pain than men and respond
differently to certain analgesics; and
   WHEREAS, Women's pain reports are taken less seriously than men's
and women receive less aggressive treatment than men for their pain;
and
   WHEREAS, Although women have more coping mechanisms to deal with
pain, this may contribute to a general perception that they can put
up with more pain and that their pain does not need to be taken as
seriously; and
   WHEREAS, Although women more frequently report pain to a health
care provider, they are more likely to have their pain reports
discounted as "emotional" or "psychogenic" and, therefore, "not real"
; and
   WHEREAS, Subjective response to painful stimuli is an accurate
indication of pain experienced, according to a study published in
June 2003 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; and

   WHEREAS, Women are socialized to attend more to their physical
appearance, and are more likely than men to have health care
providers assume they are not in pain if they look more physically
attractive; and
   WHEREAS, Men with chronic pain are more likely to delay seeking
treatment, but generally receive a more agressive response by health
care providers once they enter the health care system; and
   WHEREAS, Both men and women are more likely to have the emotional
or psychological component of their pain experience suppressed due to
Western medicine's tendency to separate mind and body and to view
objective, biological "facts" as more credible than subjective
feelings; and
   WHEREAS, It is necessary to begin educating health care providers
and those who train them to expose biases that lead to the
undertreatment of women in pain; and
   WHEREAS, Medical schools should endorse, and teach students, an
approach that best elicits the concerns of any patient in pain, and
that does not discount the patient's subjective reports of pain,
which will require attentiveness to the emotional aspects of the
patient's reports of pain; and
   WHEREAS, There needs to be scrutiny on the part of quality care
evaluators as well as ethical awareness raising by institutional
ethics committees about the current bias in the pain treatment of
women; now, therefore, be it
   Resolved by the Senate of the State of California, the Assembly
thereof concurring, That the Legislature recognizes the important
need to raise awareness concerning gender disparity in pain
assessment and treatment in the United States; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Legislature hereby proclaims the month of
February as Women In Pain Awareness Month; and be it further
   Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of this
resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.