Designing Healthcare for Women with Devika Patel
What led you to start Period Futures?
Period Futures is a team effort. I’ve been interested in menstrual health and education since I was a student. During a class that was focused on sanitation and hygiene, I went down the rabbit hole of menstruation: what to do with menstrual waste and before I knew it, I was talking with my mother and grandmother about period pain. I spent some time in India speaking to women, young and old, about menstruation — the misconceptions that surrounded it, its taboo nature, the religious and cultural aspects that surrounded it. Even though I learned a lot, I continued to think about what work I can do in this space here in the US, which is where I’m from.
I teamed up with my friends Katie and Jasmine and we realised that there is a lack of innovation around menstruation. We wanted to enable designers and creatives and bring together a community of like-minded individuals to innovate and test some ideas in preparation for Menstrual Health Day in 2020. That’s how Period Futures came to life.
What have you learned about women, girls and female-identifying groups over the years, from a healthcare perspective?
Things “designed” for women have actually been hacked together, not designed.
Many women’s focused products haven’t been designed with them. They’ve been hacked together to meet a need in the moment. For years, no one redesigned the speculum for vaginal exams. We’re being tied to traditional views from hundreds of years ago and there’s often little effort to change anything.
Women’s health is always deprioritised – time, money, transport
This is most apparent in the perinatal care journey: there’s a moment where you forget about the woman/mom/birthing person and transition your entire focus to the child. But even on the whole, it’s surprising to me how often women’s health is completely forgotten about and drops off the map. Often the women who choose to birth are seen as the vessel and not much more than that — there’s so much attention given to them beforehand and then it disappears. Aside from pregnancy, women have so much added responsibility – not only are they working, they’re taking care of the household – this affects their access to healthcare. If clinics are only open 9-5, or if they don’t have access to a car or public transport, how will women access the care they need? Limited mobility provides an added burden to their lives. Women often prioritise their healthcare during pregnancy and that’s at the service of their foetus.
Women are not believed / have to advocate for themselves much more
Women’s pain and suffering isn’t seen as something to attend to. Women are often not believed and this leads to delays in care and inadequate care. There’s a historical connotation here — women were diagnosed with “hysteria” and remnants of those practices have disproportionately increased the amount of time women have to spend advocating for themselves. It has negative effects on self esteem and mental health. Women are the strongest people I’ve ever met. They might be going through the most difficult period, but they advocate for themselves even if they are exhausted. The underlying thread is that: women are experts in their own lives and we need to treat them as such. Instead, they’re stomped all over. Make sure women feel comfortable to speak up about their experiences.
Stigmas have an unequal effect on women
In STDs for example, if a woman’s status becomes known to other people, they are more likely to be shunned and/or their husbands will leave them. Women are less likely to leave their husbands – there’s an unequal dynamic at play.
About Devika Patel
Devika received her B.S. in Engineering, Product Design from Stanford University with Honors in Education and her M.S. in Community Health and Prevention Research from Stanford University School of Medicine. She is currently a lecturer in Design at San Francisco State University. Additionally, she co-founded Period Futures, a radical exploration into the future of menstrual health.
Prior to The Better Lab, she co-founded Me, Myself and You, an award-winning board game to facilitate social connection for adults with Autism and conducted health education research at TeachAids. Her experience spans researching menstruation taboos in rural India, designing better communication systems for community health workers in rural areas, and designing sustainable toilet models for low-income communities in rural India. Outside of the world of healthcare, she practices classical Indian dance, dabbles in watercolor and embroidery, and reads nonfiction.