Avi - Team USA EndoMarch 2023

Avi is from Team Minnesota. His advocacy is helping raise awareness about how critical it is to ensure that Endometriosis advocacy, healthcare, and research is gender inclusive, so that everyone suffering from Endometriosis has a chance to receive the gold standard care they deserve and be represented in Endometriosis research, so that individual health needs are better understood in order to literally help save lives.

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ABOUT ENDOMETRIOSIS, A WHOLE-BODY CHRONIC CONDITION
#Endometriosis is an incurable, whole-body (systemic) chronic, inflammatory disease that can potentially cause incapacitating pain, multi-organ failure, infertility, and other severe and sometimes life-threatening medical consequences if inadequately treated. Described as one of the top ten most painful conditions on record, Endometriosis is also potentially one of the most destructive chronic diseases on record, reigning as the leading cause of school absences in girls and the third leading cause of hospitalization in women, girls, and people assigned female at birth.

Contrary to popular beliefs, Endometriosis is not a reproductive tract disease, but one which can potentially cause severe chronic symptoms throughout the entire body, such as system-wide crippling pain, severe chronic fatigue, immune & endocrinologic dysfunction, and damage to multiple organs and tissues, including the bowel, bladder, ureters, diaphragm, muscles, musculoskeletal structures, nerves, lungs, and liver. Endometriosis is also very common, with a prevalence on par with diabetes in women (older est. 1 in 8-10), which works out to an estimated 200 million people around the world who are affected.* (Note: Prevalence rates are unknown for cisgender men, intersex, nonbinary, and transgender people)

UNLAWFUL DISCRIMINATION & BARRIERS TO CARE CAUSING PREVENTABLE HARM
As a result of decades-long dismissive, discriminatory treatment, the vast majority of patients face years of outright discriminatory denials or insurmountable barriers to specialist care because Endometriosis continues to be dismissed as ‘normal’ or 'just a bad period’, when in fact it’s a leading cause of hospitalization, confers an almost 4-fold increased risk of certain cancers (it's associated with approximately 10% of ovarian cancers, the most deadly form of gynecologic cancer in the U.S.) and has the potential to cause or be associated with life-threatening kidney failure, life-threatening chronic lung collapse, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, increased risk of early onset neurodegenerative disease, crippling degenerative bone disease, loss of many organs & fertility, and even preventable mortality. African American Endometriosis sufferers are experiencing even worse outcomes than White Endometriosis patients, including higher mortality rates of certain Endometriosis-associated ovarian cancers and significantly longer diagnostic delays. Nonbinary, intersex, and Endo siblings from LGBTQIA+ communities also experience increased discrimination, including outright denials of care, all of which leads to significantly worse outcomes as well.

ABOUT THE GLOBAL ENDOMARCH MOVEMENT
Worldwide Endometriosis March® (Worldwide EndoMarch®) has ignited a global endometriosis uprising to help fight for urgently-needed Endometriosis Health Care Rights & Reforms. The EndoMarch Movement is an internationally-coordinated awareness campaign founded by Dr. Camran Nezhat, Dr. Farr Nezhat, Dr. Ceana Nezhat, Dr. Azadeh Nezhat, and Barbara Page. Proud original founder of the 'No pharma in Endo Advocacy 'movement, which started in 2013, when Worldwide EndoMarch became one of the earliest US-based Endometriosis Advocacy nonprofits to prohibit funding from pharmaceutical companies or any other companies which would represent a conflict of interest.

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#EndoMarch2023 #Endometriosis #EndoEqualityNow #EndEndoInequality #EndoJusticeNow #EndometriosisReformsNow #changetheguidelines #UpdateMedSchoolEndoEdu #ForwardWeGo