Sex Specific Drug

American Medical Women’s Association Position Paper on Sex and Gender Specific Medicine Background: Sex- and gender-specific healthcare is an important women’s health issue, and the US healthcare system often fails to meet women’s health care needs. Statistics generated by the 2001 IOM report “Exploring the Biological Contributions to Health: Does Sex Matter?” verify that treatment decisions based on data used by clinicians and provided in medical education can be very different when analyzed according to sex and gender. This holds true across the spectrum of prevention, diagnosis, evaluation, treatment and palliation. In some instances, those treatment decisions, if not sex- and gender-specific, can be detrimental to the health of women. Despite many considered attempts to codify data based on sex- and gender-specific research, and to create women’s health curricula, recent findings confirm that only a small percentage of practicing providers actually incorporate this knowledge into their clinical practices. And in spite of the establishment of the Office of Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health, a 2000 study in the Journal of Women’s Health reveals that even though 80% of research included women, only 25% of outcomes data were analyzed by gender, and very few clinical trials report results by gender. Other research shows that even though 60% of physicians are aware of the new NCEP lipid guidelines for women, only 25% of physicians actually implement those guidelines. Additionally, in a managed care database of 9,000 women patients, only 12% of high risk women attained the optimal level of all the lipid subfractions recommended. Although 20 Centers of Excellence and 12 Community Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health have been funded by DHHS since 1996, in 2007 it was announced that those centers will no longer be funded. The existing Residencies and Fellowships in Women’s Health have also gradually been subjected to budget cuts. AMWA’s Position on...