Navigating a Human Rights Roadblock: Making the Case for the Women\u27s Equality Act

The fight to protect women’s rights is critical now more than ever. The World Bank has noted that women throughout the world “have only three quarters of the legal rights afforded to men.”1 On the domestic front in the United States, the battleground remains fraught with blows to the women’s rights movement, especially on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rollback of reproductive rights. Statements made by the Biden Administration in support of global women’s rights, for example, have been met with inadequate action on the legislative front; the most pertinent standstill has come from the fight over the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (“CEDAW”), a long and drawn-out battle that has left the United States virtually alone in failing to explicitly affirm the global rights of women. This gap between promise and action leaves one main question open, what can be done? This comment aims to provide an answer to this question by proposing an alternative approach to the problem: using transnational civil litigation as a way to better protect the rights of women, both domestically and abroad, in United States courts. Specifically, this comment will propose a novel transnational litigation statute, the Women’s Equality Act (“WEA”), which will serve as an important, if not imperative, addition to the current domestic legal framework absent CEDAW ratification. Through multiple arguments taking into account practical and policy-oriented benefits, as well as both domestic and international legal elements, this comment’s goal is to provide the reader, whether that be a policymaker, a decisionmaker in government, or an expert in the field of global women’s rights with the base and the tools to take the WEA from an idea to a reality

Multiple retinal detachment surgery: A functional outcome study. The Houston Vision Assessment Test-Retina (HVAT-Retina)

Retinal detachment is a common ophthalmologic procedure, and outcome is typically measured by a single factor-improvement in visual acuity. Health related functional outcome testing, which quantifies patient\u27s self-reported perception of impairment, can be integrated with objective clinical findings. Based on the patient\u27s self-assessed lifestyle impairment, the physician and patient together can make an informed decision on the treatment that is most likely to benefit the patient. A functional outcome test (the Houston Vision Assessment Test-Retina; HVAT-Retina) was developed and validated in patients with multiple retinal detachments in the same eye. The HVAT-Retina divides an estimated total impairment into subcomponents: contribution of visual disability (potentially correctable by retinal detachment surgery) and nonvisual physical disabilities (co-morbidities not affected by retinal detachment surgery. Seventy-six patients participated in this prospective multicenter study. Seven patients were excluded from the analysis because they were not certain of their answers. Cronbach\u27s alpha coefficient was 0.91 for presurgery HVAT-Retina and 0.94 post-surgery. The item-to-total correlation ranged from 0.50 to 0.88. Visual impairment score improved by 9 points from pre-surgery (p = 0.0003). Physical impairment score also improved from pre-surgery (p = 0.0002). In conclusion, the results of this study demonstrate that the instrument is reliable and valid in patients presenting with recurrent retinal detachments. The HVAT-Retina is a simple instrument and does not burden the patient or the health professional in terms of time or cost. It may be self-administrated, not requiring an interviewer. Because the HVAT-Retina was designed to demonstrate outcomes perceivable by the patient, it has the potential to guide the decision making process between patient and physician