Nearly 50 years ago, Japanese mountaineer Junko Tai was hailed as the first woman to reach the top of the world’s highest peak. But women had been taking on high-altitude adventures long before her, and in increasing numbers since then. They’ve climbed, hiked, trekked—yet little scientific knowledge exists about women’s health at high altitudes. To help highlight the issue, members of the UIAA Medical Committee, along with outside experts, recently published a series of scientific reviews in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Plateau Medicine and Biology This series of articles attempts to summarize what is known so far about the health of women at high altitudes and is the result of 3 years of dedicated research and teamwork.
Women’s High Altitude Health: Frequently Asked Questions
To make this newly published scientific information accessible to the climbing community (and anyone who wants to know), we have translated the scientific language into plain English and published it in an informative yet easy-to-read format. FAQFrequently Asked Questions about Women’s Health at High Altitude range from questions like “What do women need to know about contraception at high altitudes?” to “Is it safe for pregnant women to go mountaineering at high altitudes?” We hope to expand the idea of frequently asked questions to other topics in the near future.
Click here Visit the new FAQ page!
Next UIAA Women’s High Altitude Conference
UIAA will hold The 8th World Congress of Mountain and Wilderness Medicine Organized jointly by the International Society of Mountain Medicine (ISMM) and the Wilderness Mountain Society (WMS), it will be held in Snowbird, Utah, USA, from July 29 to August 1, 2024. The conference will be co-chaired by Urs Hefti, chair of the UIAA Medical Commission, and Monika Brodmann Maeder, president of the ISMM, and will conclude a three-year project on women’s health at high altitudes.
An impressive lineup of speakers and topics will engage conference attendees:
- Bili Bierling, mountaineering journalist and Himalayan Database contributor – The time has come for women: how women climbers fare in the Himalayas from the first ascent to the present day
- Mia Derstine, MD, Wilderness Medicine Fellowship-trained Emergency Medicine Physician – AMS/HACE and Women—What We Need to Know
- Jacqueline Pichler Hefti, MD, respiratory physician, sports medicine specialist, Swiss Sportclinic – Does gender influence susceptibility to and manifestations of high-altitude pulmonary edema?
- Alison Rosier, UIAA Medical Committee Member and Psychologist – Can psychology help explain gender differences in mountain medicine?
- Linda E Keyes, MD, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Colorado Menstrual cycle control and contraception at high altitude and PregnantMountain tourism
- George Rodway, PhD, UIAA Medical Committee UIAA MedCom Recommendations: For the (non-professional) climbing community
The topic of women at high altitude is also featured in the UIAA podcast Mountain Voices, Episode 4. Listen here:
This is the first in a series of updates – more exciting developments on this topic will be released in the coming weeks.
