We are delighted to announce that this year’s winner of the Heather Trickey prize is The Best Kept Secret on Why Smear Test Uptake Might Be So Low by Roxanne Stevenson-Brown.
The panel felt this was a hugely important contribution to an under-recognised area of women’s health. The essay explored the barriers to cervical smear uptake among women with vaginismus, the lack of attention that has been paid to this, and put forward a number of clear recommendations – including widening access to home sampling for those women who want it and dedicated clinics with specialist staff.
The issues covered in this essay were particularly poignant for us as Heather had difficulties herself with screening, and subsequently went on to be diagnosed with late stage cervical cancer.
We also highly commended two essays looking at issues around fertility treatment.
Sarah Milosevic’s IVF: The Information Void reflected on her own experiences as a health researcher starting IVF treatment for the first time, and questioned whether current information provision to patients really enables informed consent. We also commended a fascinating contribution from Phoebe Pottinger, A Culture of Transparency, on the growing clamour for greater information and understanding of the artificial environment embryos are developed in during assisted reproduction, with the hope that this will lead to real improvement in treatment and women’s reproductive lives.
We hope you get as much out of reading these essays as we did, and we thank everyone for the many brilliant submissions to this year’s prize. We look forward to opening it again later in the year.
Clare Murphy, Julia Sanders, Angela McConville, Danielle Perro, Simon Brindle and Jessica Figueras
The Heather Trickey Essay Prize 