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Albert Lasker, considered the “father of modern advertising,” transformed product marketing from an endeavor based on the simple presentation of facts to one finely tuned to consumer psychology, particularly as it pertained to women. At a time when discussion of menstruation was taboo, for example, Lasker helped launch the Kotex brand by convincing popular magazines that women were eager to receive information about menstrual products. ... he joined the board of what was then called the American Birth Control League and suggested that the organization would garner broader public acceptance if it called itself “Planned Parenthood” instead. It seems fitting that some 75 years later, the Lasker Foundation, started by Albert and his wife to honor outstanding achievements in health, gave Planned Parenthood the Lasker–Bloomberg Public Service Award for a century’s worth of essential contributions to women’s health. (Lisa Rosenbaum, 11/1)

Recently, the media have devoted increasing attention to maternal mortality in the United States, as in a ProPublica and National Public Radio article describing the devastating death of a nurse shortly after her first child was born. These reports have heightened public awareness of grim realities that have been on obstetricians’ minds for years: that the rate of maternal death in the United States is higher than rates in most other high-income countries; that this rate has been rising over the past two decades; and that there are profound racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities in women’s risk of dying during or soon after pregnancy. Despite this increased awareness, issues surrounding maternal mortality have been notably absent from most health care policy debates. (Rose L. Molina and Lydia E. Pace, 11/2)

A pregnant girl or woman who shows up at a pregnancy counseling center, often in crisis, needs to know the full range of her options. But before the Reproductive FACT Act became law in 2015, most were getting an antiabortion polemic, and nothing else. The FACT Act required state-licensed pregnancy counseling centers to do one more, relative minor thing: post or provide a specifically worded notice to patients informing them about public programs that provide free or low-cost access to family planning services, including prenatal care and abortion. (11/2)

The University of Notre Dame, which once reigned as a beacon of liberal Catholic thought, has announced that it will cancel all birth-control coverage for students and employees next year. That includes contraception provided to those recipients for free, under government auspices and at government expense. Notre Dame thus becomes the first and most important employer publicly to take advantage of the Trump administration’s Oct. 6 rollback of contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. (Michael Hiltzik, 11/1)

The ravages of advanced HIV infection, the nearly-forgotten news items of the 1980s like PCP — Pneumocystis pneumonia -- and Kaposi Sarcoma, are still afflicting those diagnosed late, even if this fact is no longer news. In the last few years we have learned that taking HIV medications early in infection decreases not only these advanced-HIV-related illnesses, but also the risk of some cancers, cardiovascular disease, and renal and liver problems. (Shiva Saboori, 11/2)

I asked my friend, Mary Neubauer, to send me some thoughts this week in connection with the announcement of a gubernatorial candidate forum on mental health. It was the story of her 18-year-old son, Sergei, that inspired this effort to elevate mental health as a priority for our state. (Kathie Obradovich , 11/1)