Women's Health Next Step: Focusing on Gender Differences in Healthcare System
Healthcare Sector Favors Men Over Women: Inequality Persists - Women face disparities in healthcare services
Women are systemically disadvantaged in healthcare, asserted Cornelia Urban, an SPD parliamentarian and practicing physician. In her view, the current medical practice, research, and education frequently overlook the unique aspects of women's health. For instance, women may present different symptoms in conditions like heart attacks, and medications can affect them differently.
The underdiagnosing of several women-specific diseases, such as endometriosis, autoimmune diseases, and migraines, is a concern. Further, long-term effects of hormonal changes are often neglected.
Urban outlined several measures to bridge this gap, including systematically integrating gender differences into medical education, ensuring balanced representation in clinical studies, and differentiating the evaluation of results. She articulated these proposals on the occasion of the dedication of May 28 as the Day of Women's Health, focusing on the specific healthcare needs of women and girls.
To better tailor medical education and research to women's health issues, it's crucial to systematically incorporate an understanding of both sex (biological traits like chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs) and gender (societal roles, behaviors, and identities). Strategies to achieve this alignment include:
- Updating medical curricula with dedicated modules on sex and gender differences in disease presentation, diagnosis, treatment response, and outcomes.
- Case-based learning that spotlights how symptoms, disease progression, and treatment responses may vary by sex and gender.
- Empowering future physicians with gender-sensitive communication skills, enabling them to address implicit biases and communicate effectively with patients of all genders.
In addition, incorporating gender differences in clinical studies involves designing studies that disaggregate data by sex and gender, recruiting representative samples, addressing social determinants, applying sex- and gender-based analysis, and transparently reporting when and how sex and gender considerations were incorporated.
Several policy and practice recommendations have been suggested to integrate gender differences, such as institutional policies requiring gender equity in research and encouraging funding agencies to prioritize gender-inclusive studies. Moreover, ensuring the practice of personalized medicine through sex- and gender-specific guidelines can significantly improve diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis for women and other underrepresented groups.
In conclusion, embracing sex and gender considerations at every stage of medical education and clinical research can effectively address women's health issues and result in improved health outcomes, a more equitable healthcare system, and a better-informed line of evidence-based interventions for women.
- To meet the unique needs of women regarding health and wellness, it's essential to integrate community policies that champion gender differences in medical education, such as updating curricula with sex and gender modules.
- To ensure fairness and accuracy in science, especially women's health, scientific research should adhere to employment policies that value gender inclusivity, such as balanced representation in clinical studies and the disaggregation of data by sex and gender.
