Women & Girls Education Summit 2019 Event Review – May 19th, 2019

 In News, NYCHC Events, Women

On Sunday, May 19th, the New York City Hemophilia Chapter was proud to hold its Women & Girls Education Summit – a full day of education specifically for females with bleeding disorders and their caretakers in our community.

Aside from education, a large component of this event (and all of our Education Summits) was connecting and building relationships between the attendees. To kick off the event, an icebreaker was facilitated by Alice, one of our board members and who also has a personal connection to the bleeding disorder community. She provided a fun, engaging exercise with Legos as way to begin the day with everyone feeling relaxed and comfortable with one another.

While it is generally accepted that females in the bleeding disorder community are more likely to have Von Willebrand Disease, did you know they can have Hemophilia rather than VWD? In our local NYC community, we have quite a few females with Hemophilia with some being present at our event. Given this, the sessions were focused on the impact of bleeding disorders on females in general and shared issues regardless of specific condition.

The first educational session of the day was focused on mental health. NYCHC invited Maya Genovesi, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and who is currently the Social Work Supervisor in the Emergency Department and Rapid Evaluation and Treatment Unit at Mount Sinai Hospital to speak on the topic of stress. In her presentation, Ms. Genovesi covered a wide range of points within stress – signs, symptoms (short and long term), causes, treatment and prevention – to give our attendees a better understanding of how to manage stress in their day to day lives.

Following the session on mental health, our attendees were then given a presentation on the direct impact of bleeding disorders on females by Dr. Beau Mitchell, one of the hematologists at Mount Sinai Hemophilia Treatment Center. In his presentation, Dr. Mitchell gave clinical data and professional insights on ways that bleeding disorders uniquely affect the normal biological processes that females experience.

As a way to bring the day to a close in a warm and connected way, Jeanette led our attendees in a “Rose Ceremony” in which they were empowered to both recognize and celebrate the strength in themselves and with each other. This intimate ceremony allowed our attendees to share their stories and allowed the opportunity to connect on a deeper level with each another.

 

We at NYCHC thank all of our speakers for giving their time and expertise to our attendees and we hope that we can continue to bring meaningful programming and education to all of members.

If you’d like to help in developing and implementing Women & Girls-focused programs (or any of our programs & events) for the NYC Hemophilia Chapter, please contact us at [email protected] to join our list of volunteers!

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