The Practice of Ruth Haskins MD

The Practice of Ruth Haskins MD We aim to provide the highest quality Obstetrical and Gynecologic care to women of all ages in a rel
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Empowering Your Health: The Importance of Routine Preventive CareAt our practice we believe that informed patients are e...
09/08/2026

Empowering Your Health: The Importance of Routine Preventive Care

At our practice we believe that informed patients are empowered patients. Prioritizing preventive care is one of the most impactful steps you can take for your long-term health and wellness.

Here are a few quick reminders for keeping your health on track:
•Schedule Your Annual Wellness Exam: Routine screenings, such as annual pelvic exams and clinical breast evaluations, are vital for catching potential health concerns early.
•Stay Proactive with Your Wellness: Whether you are navigating the transitions of perimenopause, planning for a growing family, or simply maintaining your routine care, our team is here to provide personalized guidance tailored to your lifestyle.

Connect With Our Office: To schedule your next visit or discuss your wellness goals, please call our Folsom office at (916) 817-2649 or visit us online at www.ruthhaskinsmd.com.

Gloria Steinem is gone. The fight she helped begin is not.Gloria Steinem died this week at 92, a journalist, writer and ...
09/04/2026

Gloria Steinem is gone. The fight she helped begin is not.

Gloria Steinem died this week at 92, a journalist, writer and pioneering feminist who spent more than five decades fighting for women’s equality, reproductive freedom and a stronger voice for women in American life.

She co-founded Ms. magazine and the National Women’s Political Caucus, helped bring issues such as workplace discrimination and reproductive rights into the national conversation, and remained an outspoken advocate for equality well into her 80s.

But perhaps her greatest legacy was something less tangible: the insistence that progress requires participation.

Rights that were once unimaginable became possible because women organised, marched, voted, spoke out and refused to accept “that's just the way things are.”

Today, many of those same rights are being challenged again.

So perhaps the best way to honour Gloria Steinem isn't simply to remember her.

It's to keep going.

Register. Vote. Speak up. Organise. Defend reproductive freedom. Defend equality. And when someone tells you that one person can't make a difference, remember the women who spent their lives proving otherwise.

Gloria Steinem once said she was proud of how far women had come and angry that we were still fighting the same old battles.

Rest well, Gloria. Thank you.

California, we need to pay attention.Much talk is circulating in the news regarding voter suppression. Across the countr...
09/03/2026

California, we need to pay attention.

Much talk is circulating in the news regarding voter suppression.

Across the country, we are witnessing growing efforts to make voting more difficult through restrictions on registration, voter rolls, mail-in ballots and access to the ballot box.

California has deliberately chosen a different path. We have same-day voter registration, extensive vote-by-mail access and automatic voter registration through the DMV. We have worked to make participation in our democracy more accessible, not less. But California is not an island.

Federal attempts to interfere with how states administer elections should concern us all. The answer is not cynicism or disengagement. It is determination and turnout.

If you're registered, vote.
If you've moved, check your registration.
If you're not registered, register.

If your ballot arrives by mail, complete it and return it on time.
And if someone tells you your vote doesn't matter, remember this: our freedoms are protected only when we actively defend them.

Voting rights. Reproductive freedom. Healthcare. Workers' rights. The fundamental principle that government should serve the people, not the other way around.

None of these rights should be taken for granted.

California has a proud tradition of making democracy accessible. Let's use that right and make our voices impossible to ignore as
turnout is power.

There is something about September that feels like a reset.The days begin to shorten, summer starts to fade, and suddenl...
08/31/2026

There is something about September that feels like a reset.

The days begin to shorten, summer starts to fade, and suddenly everyone is back to schedules, school, work, sports and the familiar rush of everyday life.

Before the calendar completely takes over, take a moment to think about your health.

When was the last time you had your annual exam? Have you been putting off that mammogram, screening, or conversation about something that has been bothering you? Maybe you have questions about contraception, menopause, pregnancy, or simply something that doesn't feel quite right.

Don't ignore the small things. Your body has a way of getting your attention when you don't listen the first time.

September is a good month to check in, ask questions and make your health a priority, not because something is necessarily wrong, but because prevention and early detection matter.

So, as we say goodbye to summer and welcome fall, make room on that increasingly crowded calendar for the person who is usually taking care of everyone else.

You deserve a little attention, too.

Here's to a healthy, happy September!

www.ruthhaskinsmd.com
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Title X is a federal family-planning program created in 1970. For more than 50 years, it has helped millions of American...
08/29/2026

Title X is a federal family-planning program created in 1970. For more than 50 years, it has helped millions of Americans access affordable preventive healthcare, particularly those with low incomes or without insurance.

Title X supports birth control, pregnancy testing and counseling, STI testing and treatment, infertility services, and breast and cervical cancer screening. Importantly for some, Title X does not fund abortions.

Now the Trump administration is attempting to change the rules. The proposed requirements would push Title X providers to promote marriage and parenthood in counseling, place greater emphasis on natural family planning, and impose new restrictions involving gender, diversity and inclusion. California isn't taking it quietly.

Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined 22 other states in suing the administration to protect Title X funding. California has the largest Title X program in the country, serving more than 460,000 people. There is plenty worth protecting.

Contraception prevents unintended pregnancies. Screening detects cancer earlier. STI testing prevents disease and complications. Family-planning services give people the information and care they need to make informed decisions about their health and their futures. It saves money. Preventing unintended pregnancies and identifying health problems early is considerably less expensive than dealing with the medical and financial consequences later.

California has a long tradition of standing up for access to healthcare. This is another fight worth having because allowing ideology to dictate medical care threatens not only reproductive healthcare, but the integrity of our healthcare system as a whole.

www.ruthhaskinsmd.com

There are some days when the world seems to lose a little more color.Today, we say goodbye to Tim Curry, 80, whose extra...
08/26/2026

There are some days when the world seems to lose a little more color.

Today, we say goodbye to Tim Curry, 80, whose extraordinary career gave us everything from the deliciously wicked Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show to unforgettable performances in film, television and on stage. He had a voice, a presence and a mischievousness that simply belonged to him.

Yesterday, we lost Dolly Parton, also 80 - a woman who somehow managed to be larger than life while making millions of people feel as though she was sitting right beside them. Singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, philanthropist and, perhaps most importantly, an extraordinarily kind human being. Her Imagination Library alone has put millions of books into the hands of children.

Two very different talents. Two very different lives. But both understood something important about being human: make people laugh, make people feel, and leave the world a little better than you found it.

As a doctor, I spend much of my life thinking about how we keep people here. Days like today are a reminder that medicine can give us more time, but it cannot give us forever. What we do with the time we have is the part that matters.

Rest peacefully, Dolly and Tim. Thank you for the music, the laughter, the theatre, the memories and for making so many lives a little brighter.

A Monday morning thought: there is no love quite like a mother’s love for her baby.It begins long before you meet them —...
08/24/2026

A Monday morning thought: there is no love quite like a mother’s love for her baby.

It begins long before you meet them — a tiny heartbeat, a growing bump, a thousand hopes and a love that somehow arrives before the baby does.

And then they’re here, and suddenly your heart is walking around outside your body.

Here’s to all the mothers beginning another week with that extraordinary, exhausting, beautiful job of loving someone more than themselves.

www.ruthhaskinsmd.com

Perhaps “socialism” is simply prudent accounting.As a physician, I find America’s approach to healthcare increasingly in...
08/19/2026

Perhaps “socialism” is simply prudent accounting.

As a physician, I find America’s approach to healthcare increasingly indefensible.

The United States spends $14,885 per person on healthcare - 2½ times the average of the 38 wealthy democracies that make up the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The OECD average is just under $6,000 per person.

And what do we get for it?

Our rate of preventable deaths (deaths that could potentially be avoided through effective prevention) is 217 per 100,000, compared with 145 across the OECD. Life expectancy in the USA is also 3 years lower too.

Meanwhile, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Trump last year, cuts federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over ten years. Its new work requirements alone are expected to leave millions of Americans uninsured.
This is the part I struggle with as a doctor.

Britain has the NHS. Canada has publicly funded provincial healthcare. France and Germany use universal insurance systems. Italy has the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, Australia has Medicare. They are not identical, and none is perfect. But they share one rather important idea: getting sick should not mean losing access to healthcare.

And universal healthcare should mean just that - universal. It should include preventive care, maternity care, contraception, cancer screening, mental healthcare and the right of a woman to make decisions about her own pregnancy with her doctor, not with a politician.

We have somehow made the phrase healthcare for all sound radical, while accepting a system that costs us twice as much and leaves us with worse outcomes.

If a business spent $14,885 to produce something its competitors produced for $6,000 — and then produced worse results we wouldn't call that capitalism. We'd call it a financial disaster.

Perhaps we should stop arguing about whether universal healthcare sounds “socialist” and ask a much simpler question:
Does it work?

The evidence indicates that spending collectively, negotiating collectively and guaranteeing care collectively can be not only more humane, but considerably more economical and produces better life expectancy.

Sometimes socialism isn't socialism. Sometimes it's just good accounting, with a pulse and a conscience!

www.ruthhaskinsmd.com

The Air May Look Fine. That Doesn’t Mean It Is.We talk a lot about what pregnant women should eat, drink, take and avoid...
08/17/2026

The Air May Look Fine. That Doesn’t Mean It Is.

We talk a lot about what pregnant women should eat, drink, take and avoid. But there is another exposure we don't always think about: the air we breathe.

A new study of 64.5 million pregnancies across the United States found that wildfire smoke has become the leading source of unhealthy fine-particle pollution exposure during pregnancy. And here in California, wildfire smoke is hardly an abstract concern — it is increasingly part of summer life.

Wildfire smoke contains tiny particles called PM2.5 that can travel deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Research has linked exposure during pregnancy with an increased risk of preterm birth and other adverse birth outcomes.

So, when the smoke rolls in, don't simply look out the window and decide whether it "looks bad.”

Check the AQI (air quality Index)

If air quality is poor:
• Reduce strenuous outdoor activity
• Keep windows and doors closed when practical
• Use your HVAC system on recirculate and consider a HEPA air purifier
• If you need to go outside when smoke levels are high, a well-fitting N95 can help filter fine particles
• And if you're pregnant, especially during a significant smoke event, take the air quality seriously.

You don't need to panic. You just need to pay attention.

Because during wildfire season, protecting your health can be as simple as checking the air before you check the weather.

www.ruthhaskinsmd.com

Address

1611 Creekside Drive, Suite 103
Folsom, CA
95630

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 5pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 5pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 5pm
Thursday 8:30am - 5pm
Friday 8:30am - 5pm

Telephone

+19168172649

Website

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