Women’s Health Faces Some Difficult Headwinds. Here’s How We Can Move Forward
December 13, 2023 | Leadership, Medscape, Women in healthcare
When it comes to women’s health, “we are a bit behind — almost where oncology was 20 years ago and neuroscience was about 10 years ago,” says Sandra Milligan, Head of Research and Development at Organon, a global healthcare company whose vision is “a better and healthier every day for women.” With women comprising half the population, “and a very important component of our society and economy and family structure,” things must change, she says. “We really need to make this investment for women to move their health forward.”
One of the biggest gaps we see, agree Milligan and Jennifer Goedken, Associate Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine, is a lack of investment in the basic research around women’s biology and physiology.
“Research done in pregnant patients is almost unheard of,” says Goedkin. Same goes for sexual functioning and arousal in peri- and postmenopausal women. Women in menopause come to me and “there’s almost nothing I can offer them because there’s almost nothing that has been researched in comparison to our male counterparts.” The prevailing attitude is, Well these issues are just part of life, phases of life, and part of being a woman. And that is nonsense.
Another gap,” Goedkin adds, is “unequal compensation [for physicians]. Surgeries that are basically equivalent between men and women are compensated at very different levels. These sorts of disparities really marginalize women’s healthcare in general.”
Partly these issues are because of who’s in the room when decisions are made, about promotions or things like funding for research and development. The reality is, the decision makers are mostly men, so it’s not surprising that “the focus is on medications that address men,” Goedkin says.
All the accomplished women in this Women in Medicine Leadership series agree on several things: Mentorship and sponsorship/advocacy are super important in helping to move women up the ladder and change the status quo. You need to have an advocate so when a position opens up someone is putting your name out there and pulling for you.
And of course we need more women in leadership roles across the board, as lead researchers, CMOs, conference heads and CEOs. To not only shape the future of women’s healthcare but also to set an example for the next generation. So young women in medicine can look up to the head table and see people who look like them, and get the idea in their head that that could be them someday.
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Moderated by Karen Reid, Senior Director, Medscape Education
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