RISK ASSESSMENT
IWBCA Women’s Thrombosis Burden + Prevention Index™
Pregnancy and childbirth push a woman’s body to the edge of survival. The same biology that prevents hemorrhage causes one in ten maternal deaths from preventable blood clots, and the risk of fatal thrombosis rises up to sixtyfold in the first six weeks after delivery. Cesarean birth, preeclampsia, infection, or even brief immobility can flip that switch. Yet most women are never told that the postpartum period is the most dangerous time in their lives for stroke, pulmonary embolism, or sudden death.
02
Hormonal Contraception + Replacement Therapies
Across all hormonal drugs—contraceptives, fertility agents, and HRT—the vascular risk is undeniable. Women on combined estrogen-progestin contraceptives face a three to fivefold higher risk of VTE than non-users, climbing to six to eightfold with high-risk formulations. In overweight users, the risk increases twelvefold, and in those with obesity it surges twenty-fourfold. Postmenopausal women on HRT face roughly double the risk of pulmonary embolism.
03
Aquired + Inherited
Thrombophilia
In women with inherited or acquired thrombophilias, the danger is catastrophic. When hormones enter the mix through birth control, fertility treatment, or hormone replacement therapy (HRT), clot risk can explode up to fifty times higher than baseline. These women are walking into minefields they don’t know exist; a single pill, patch, or injection can be enough to trigger a pulmonary embolism, stroke, or fatal cardiac event in someone who was otherwise healthy.
04
Surgery + Extended
Hospitalization
Surgery and hospitalization remain among the deadliest breeding grounds for thrombosis. Within days of immobility or tissue trauma, clot risk can spike 100-fold, with up to 60% of hospital-acquired deaths now traced to undiagnosed deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism. Even minor procedures can trigger fatal clots when combined with dehydration, anesthesia, or hormonal therapy—turning a routine hospital stay into the most dangerous part of recovery.
05
Malignancies + Autoimmune
Conditions
Women with breast, ovarian, uterine, or lung malignancies face extreme clotting risk as tumors trigger coagulation and chemotherapy destroys vascular integrity. The danger multiplies when hormones or steroids are added—clot risk can soar twentyfold, turning recovery into crisis. Autoimmune diseases like lupus, antiphospholipid syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis amplify the same process, making thrombotic death a leading but overlooked consequence of modern treatment.
ABOUT
History of the IWBCA
The International Women’s Blood Clot Advocates (IWBCA) was founded by a husband-and-wife team after a series of preventable medical crises nearly cost her life and her leg. She had been a runner and lifelong athlete with training in exercise science and kinesiology, yet sudden leg and hip immobility was dismissed as muscle strain. Months of pain were treated with stretching and foam rolling over what later proved to be extensive deep vein thromboses, until the clots broke loose and caused a saddle pulmonary embolism, cardiac arrest, systemic organ failure, and severe lower limb ischemia. She survived against clinical odds, with limb function intact, but only after experiencing how easily women’s clot symptoms can be misread, minimized, and allowed to progress to the edge of catastrophe.
Both founders brought this lived experience together with a formal background in kinesiology, public health, athletics, and nutrition. Her work with international prevention and health systems design, along with credentials in health education, medical writing, and ethics, shaped IWBCA’s focus on clear, practical information. His perspective as a spouse and caregiver grounded the organization in the realities families face when charts, referrals, and discharge summaries do not match what the body is clearly telling them.
Today they continue this work as parents to a young daughter. IWBCA exists to close the global awareness gap around deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and clotting disorders that disproportionately affect women, and to equip women and their families with the knowledge to recognize red-flag symptoms, ask direct questions, and participate fully in decisions about their care. Thrombosis is estimated to claim about 17 million lives worldwide each year while receiving a small fraction of federal research funding. IWBCA stands in that gap as a promise to the next generation that survival should never depend on luck, timing, or the ability to argue for care in the middle of a crisis.
PREVENTION INITIATIVES
IWBCA Upstream Health Initiative™
Real progress in women’s health begins before the crisis. It begins upstream, in the space where prevention should take place, but rarely does. For too long, healthcare has waited downstream, pulling women out of the current only after they have been swept under by disease. The system has perfected the rescue but neglected the prevention. Once a woman is pulled from the current, the treatment begins and rarely ends. Symptoms are managed, not eliminated. Medication becomes permanent, and patients become customers for life.
The IWBCA Upstream Health Initiative™ is committed to reversing that pattern. The initiative shifts the focus to the source of risk, where early testing, accurate assessment, and education can keep women from ever falling into the depths of disease in the first place. This approach redefines prevention as an active standard of care. Our purpose is to stop disease before it begins and to create a healthcare model that values protection over lifelong management.
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