Women's Health in the 2016 Election Cycle

On the eve of Super Tuesday many voters (including this one) are left wondering "What happened to public health issues?" "What about women's health?" "When are Dems going to set the agenda for the national conversation, rather than just react to the Conservative front runners?"
This election cycle public health issues, particularly those directly related to women's health, have been comfortably relegated to the purview of Democrats. And when left to the Dems, the focus on public health sharpened momentarily with citations of Planned Parenthood defunding and lead in the drinking water, but that was a transient interest, at best. Soon after a cursory mention in debate or town hall meeting the focus became fuzzy again, and the issue of public health was essentially deprioritized. The Dems continue to allow the Republican presidential candidates to inject inaccuracies into the national conversation with little if any contradiction or counterpoint. For example, Planned Parenthood and its network of clinics across the Nation have been consistently and vehemently demonized by Conservatives--the sole focus of such comments is abortion. Irrespective of one's view on abortion, Planned Parenthood clinics offer low-cost, affordable health care to women and their families; such services include vaccinations for both flu and tetanus, anemia screening, diabetes screening, cholesterol screening, employment and sports physicals, smoking cessation services, hypertension screening, thyroid screening--all of this in addition to well woman exams, health exams for men, HIV testing, STD/STI testing, and distribution of birth control. Does it make a lot of sense to defund or restrict funding to such an organization that provides so many fundamental, basic medical services when so many areas of the country are in the throes of a primary care shortage, i.e. inner city and rural towns? Furthermore, Planned Parenthood has an income-based fee schedule and does accept Medicaid. Too many primary care providers are limiting the number of Medicaid patients that their practices will see, if they are willing to see any at all. Why or better yet how has it become acceptable to remove from at-risk communities, the one provider who will see and treat everyone? It would be a wonderful thing to have the Democratic nominee pose such questions to the nominated Republican during the general election debates. Who amongst us, however, believes it will happen?
 Going still further--the realignment of states' WIC reimbursements hasn't made the list of election issues, neither has the need to fully revamp food sources that supply the National School Lunch Program. In addition, neither side of the aisle is addressing ground water contamination with atrazine and glyphosate--two lawn chemicals and known human carcinogens which are readily available in any home improvement store.
As the election cycle progresses the bipartisan marginalization of public health and women's health issues must stop; these areas of concern deserve advancement to the fore of our national conversation.