Health Equity & Gender Differences

 

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In 2002, the Institute of Medicine highlighted racial and ethnic inequities in health status and health care treatment as critical issues for research and intervention studies. But what is a health disparity or a health inequity? What progress have we made toward eliminating health disparities? What strategies might help us to achieve health equity, and what does achieving health equity look like? Wanda McClain, Vice President of Community Health and Health Equity in the Center for Community Health and Health Equity (CCHHE), Jennifer Haas, MD, MSc, Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care (DGMPC), and Cheryl Clark, MD, ScD, Director of Health Equity Research & Intervention in the CCHHE and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the DGMPC, will lead a discussion that defines health equity, frames the state of the science of promoting health equity, and proposes how community engagement can be used to advance health equity and improve health outcomes for diverse racial and ethnic groups.

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The majority of the U.S. population is female. By 2050, non-Hispanic whites will be the minority of the U.S. population. Yet much of the evidence base for medicine, from bench to bedside, has been drawn from male animal models or human studies that have left out women or racial/ethnic minorities. Gender and race affect everything from the incidence of disease, the symptoms with which we present, the treatments we receive (or don’t), our responses to treatment, and our recovery from illness. For research to remain cutting edge and relevant, we need to consider the impact of race and gender as both context and opportunity. In this symposium, five BWH experts will give brief TED-style talks regarding the history, the state-of-the-science, and the future for disparities research, followed by time for moderated audience input.

Speakers:

Cheryl Clark, MD, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Medicine (General Medicine), BWH

Jill Goldstein, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry, BWH

Jennifer Haas, MD, MSc, Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care

Wanda McClain, MPA, Executive Director, Center for Community Health & Health Equity

Janet Rich-Edwards, ScD, MPH, Associate Professor, Dept. of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health

Session Chairs:

Wanda McClain, MPA, Executive Director, Center for Community Health & Health Equity

Janet Rich-Edwards, ScD, MPH, Associate Professor, Dept. of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health

 

Research Bios

Dr. Cheryl Clark’s Dr. Clark is Director of Health Equity Research & Intervention in the Center for Community Health and Health Equity at the BWH. Her interests are in social and structural determinants of health disparities, and the care of vulnerable populations in hospital settings. Her research focuses on social determinants of health as explanatory factors for racial and ethnic disparities in cancer risk. An emerging body of literature demonstrates that disparities in cancer outcomes are not explained solely by access to medical care. Her recent work includes the evaluation of a case-management intervention to improve screening and abnormal follow up for breast and cervical cancer screening among black women.

 

Dr. Jill Goldstein is an internationally-recognized expert on sex differences in the brain during development and in adulthood, and how disruption of sexually dimorphic processes can help us understand sex differences in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, affective psychoses, and depression.  She has published numerous articles in these areas. Dr. Goldstein is also building a unique research infrastructure for the Connors Center at Brigham & Women’s Hospital to foster collaborative efforts to understand mechanisms that explain sex differences in health and disease across disciplines and methods of study and to provide a source of knowledge and training for future young scientists and clinicians in women’s health and gender biology

Dr. Jennifer S. Haas is a practicing general internist in the Division of General Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She also serves as Co-Director of the Health Disparities Research Program of the Harvard Catalyst. Her primary research interests focus on elucidating and eliminating disparities in health care and health status by insurance status, socioeconomic status, and race/ ethnicity. Her recent work has focused on disparities in cancer control and outcomes, and the impact of policies related to prescription drugs on disparities. She is particularly interested in how the social and physical environment may influence disparities in the dissemination of information, treatments, and health status.

Wanda McClain is the Executive Director at the Center for Community Health & Health Equity at BWH. She works with physicians, nurses and administrative leadership to develop targeted strategies for improving care and health outcomes for diverse patient populations. She collaborates with many community organizations and government agencies to identify and address barriers to health care access and mobilize community resources to find solutions.

Dr. Janet Rich-Edwards is an epidemiologist focused on the intersection of a woman’s health and that of her children, investigating the social and biological pathways through which health and disease processes originate in childhood and adolescence. Her research includes early life determinants of women’s reproductive health and of chronic disease, including the ways in which reproductive health in early adulthood reveals subclinical chronic disease trajectories. Her more recent work has explored the ways in which indicators of female reproductive fitness, including menstrual function, fibroids, pregnancy complications, and poor pregnancy outcomes are associated with chronic disease in maturity.