Featuring Elizabeth Comen, MD

Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Historian at NYU

Co-Director of the Mignone Women’s Health Collaborative at NYU Langone Health

 

Dr. Elizabeth Comen, M.D., has dedicated her medical career to saving the lives of women. Though women comprise 50% of the population, their health is often overlooked, misunderstood, and met with derision as mere “bikini medicine.” This blatant disregard often leads to life-threatening consequences in the form of delayed or inaccurate diagnoses that could have been avoided had doctors taken their patients’ concerns seriously. An award-winning, internationally sought-after clinician and physician-scientist, Dr. Comen works to bring women’s health out of the shadows and into the light. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU and a medical historian. She is Co-Director of the new Mignone Women’s Health Collaborative at NYU Langone Health.

Dr. Comen’s first book, a USA Today bestseller, is titled “All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today”. Praised in a starred review by Publishers Weekly as “meticulously researched and conveyed in lucid prose,” it “fascinates and outrages in equal measure.” It made Oprah’s Book Club. In a world where women weren’t required to be included in clinical trials until 1993 and heart disease symptoms common in women are still called atypical because they don’t often present in men, “All in Her Head” works to right the wrongs of centuries of what Comen calls “insidious incuriousity” about women’s health. Part medical history, part holistic reintroduction to women’s bodies, part call-to-action, the book reminds us that women are not small, “hysterical” men ruled by hormones.