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Background: Academic couples constitute 36% of the US professoriate. Universities are in the midst of a major transition in hiring practices to support these and other faculty with working partners. However, less is known about academic couples among medical school faculty and surgical specialties specifically. This study was designed to address this gap. Study Design: In 2006−2007, the Michelle R Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University designed and administered the “Managing Academic Careers Survey” to nearly 30,000 full-time faculty across all academic fields at leading research universities nationwide. This study included 2,475 medical school faculty survey respondents at 12 participating institutions. Main outcomes measures were academic partner status; number of journal articles/chapters during career; and applications to other academic position(s) in last 5 years. Results: A total of 73.3% of medical school faculty respondents were in dual-career partnerships (where both partners actively pursue employment) and 32.2% had an academic partner. Sixty-nine percent of academic partners were also in medical schools. Women faculty were more likely than men to have an academic partner. Among surgery faculty, 40% of women had an academic partner, as compared with 29.3% of men. In fully adjusted regression models, faculty with academic partners had higher publication counts than other faculty, and had higher odds of applying to other academic positions. Conclusions: Academic couples constitute one-third of all medical school faculty. They represent a productive and potentially mobile component of the medical faculty workforce. Because women had a higher rate of academic partnering, dual-career academic hiring policies are especially important for recruitment and retention of female faculty in surgical specialties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sex and gender are distinct terms that must be used correctly. Data regarding sex and gender may be collected using a 2-step method that separates biological sex and self-reported gender identity. The PhenX Toolkit, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is one tool that provides investigators with recommended standard data-collection protocols. Another tool is the Diversity Minimal Item Set questionnaire. Importantly, sex and gender interact: for example, pain has both biological aspects (sex differences in electrical, ischemic, thermal, pressure, and muscle pain sensitivity) and cultural aspects (gender factors in how people report pain and how physicians understand and treat pain in patients). Gender norms, identity, and relations all impact patient care. Gender norms, for instance, may influence how a person experiences pain, gender identity may influence a person's willingness to report pain, and gender relations may influence a physician's gendered expectations in relation to a patient's gendered behaviors. Clinicians may perceive women's pain to be psychological; as a result, women may receive more nonspecific diagnoses, wait longer for treatment, and receive more antidepressants and fewer analgesics than men. Research on gender-diverse people and pain is just now emerging. Resources for methods of reporting include The Lancet, Nature, and the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) Guidelines. We must consider all relevant factors intersecting with sex and gender, including age, disabilities, educational background, ethnicity, family configuration, geographic location, race, sexuality, social and economic status, sustainability, and more., Competing Interests: Disclosure: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R13AR082710. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest form is provided with the online version of the article ( http://links.lww.com/JBJS/I133 )., (Copyright © 2024 by The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Incorporated.)

World Health Day underscores the scientific community's commitment to achieving health equity for all. It is paramount to eliminate bias in research that has traditionally focused on men, neglecting the specific needs of diverse populations. Innovative clinical trial designs are being developed with more inclusive enrollment. Ensuring equitable access to essential antibiotics, coupled with robust infection prevention and control measures, is vital to safeguarding public health. The pursuit of health equity extends beyond the realm of medicine. Investments in local food production and robust social safety nets are critical for mitigating the effects of climate change on access to healthy diets. Additionally, in times of polycrisis, prioritizing the unique needs of children and empowering community-led healthcare initiatives in conflict zones are essential steps. By taking these actions, we can move closer to realizing everyone's fundamental right to health., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Abstract: Sex and gender influence every aspect of human health; thus, sex- and gender-related topics should be incorporated in all aspects of health education curricula. Sex and gender health education (SGHE) is the rigorous, intersectional, data-driven integration of sex and gender into all elements of health education. A multisectoral group of thought leaders has collaborated to advance SGHE since 2012. This cross-sector collaboration to advance SGHE has been successful on several fronts, primarily developing robust interprofessional SGHE programs, hosting a series of international SGHE summits, developing sex- and gender-specific resources, and broadening the collaboration beyond medical education. However, other deeply entrenched challenges have proven more difficult to address, including accurate and consistent sex and gender reporting in research publications, broadening institutional support for SGHE, and the development and implementation of evaluation plans for assessing learner outcomes and the downstream effects of SGHE on patient care. This commentary reflects on progress made in SGHE over the first decade of the current collaboration (2012-2022), articulates a vision for next steps to advance SGHE, and proposes 4 benchmarks to guide the next decade of SGHE: (1) integrate sex, gender, and intersectionality across health curricula; (2) develop sex- and gender-specific resources for health professionals; (3) improve sex and gender reporting in research publications; and (4) develop evaluation plans to assess learner and patient outcomes., (Copyright © 2023 Written work prepared by employees of the Federal Government as part of their official duties is, under the U.S. Copyright Act, a “work of the United States Government” for which copyright protection under Title 17 of the United States Code is not available. As such, copyright does not extend to the contributions of employees of the Federal Government.)

Excellent research integrates sex, gender, and/or intersectional analysis-from the very beginning and throughout the research process. This article highlights techniques for analyzing sex, how sex and sex interact, how sex and gender interact, and the need for intersectional analysis. Designing sex, gender, and intersectional analysis into research is one crucial component contributing to world-class health and biomedicine., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The author declares no competing interests., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

To improve the outcomes of research and medicine, government-based international research funding agencies have implemented various types of policies and mechanisms with respect to sex as a biological variable and gender as a sociocultural factor. After the 1990s, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the European Commission (EC) began requesting that applicants address sex and gender considerations in grant proposals, and offering resources to help the scientific community integrate sex and gender into biomedical research. Although it is too early to analyze data on the success of all of the policies and mechanisms implemented, here we review the use both of carrots (incentives) and sticks (requirements) developed to motivate researchers and the entire scientific research enterprise to consider sex and gender influences on health and in science. The NIH focused on sex as a biological variable (SABV) aligned with an initiative to enhance reproducibility through rigor and transparency; CIHR instituted a sex- and gender-based analysis (SGBA) policy; and the EC required the integration of the "gender dimension," which incorporates sex, gender, and intersectional analysis into research and innovation. Other global efforts are briefly summarized. Although we are still learning what works, we share lessons learned to improve the integration of sex and gender considerations into research. In conjunction with refining and expanding the policies of funding agencies and mechanisms, private funders/philanthropic groups, editors of peer-reviewed journals, academic institutions, professional organizations, ethics boards, health care systems, and industry also need to make concerted efforts to integrate sex and gender into research, and we all must bridge across silos to promote systemwide solutions throughout the biomedical enterprise. For example, policies that encourage researchers to disaggregate data by sex and gender, the development of tools to better measure gender effects, or policies similar to SABV and/or SGBA adopted by private funders would accelerate progress. Uptake, accountability for, and a critical appraisal of sex and gender throughout the biomedical enterprise will be crucial to achieving the goal of relevant, reproducible, replicable, and responsible science that will lead to better evidence-based, personalized care for all, but especially for women., (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Endocrine Society 2021.)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can potentially impact many aspects of human health, from basic research discovery to individual health assessment. It is critical that these advances in technology broadly benefit diverse populations from around the world. This can be challenging because AI algorithms are often developed on non-representative samples and evaluated based on narrow metrics. Here we outline key challenges to biomedical AI in outcome design, data collection and technology evaluation, and use examples from precision health to illustrate how bias and health disparity may arise in each stage. We then suggest both short term approaches-more diverse data collection and AI monitoring-and longer term structural changes in funding, publications, and education to address these challenges., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors have nothing to disclose., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The goal of sex and gender analysis is to promote rigorous, reproducible and responsible science. Incorporating sex and gender analysis into experimental design has enabled advancements across many disciplines, such as improved treatment of heart disease and insights into the societal impact of algorithmic bias. Here we discuss the potential for sex and gender analysis to foster scientific discovery, improve experimental efficiency and enable social equality. We provide a roadmap for sex and gender analysis across scientific disciplines and call on researchers, funding agencies, peer-reviewed journals and universities to coordinate efforts to implement robust methods of sex and gender analysis.

Word embeddings are a powerful machine-learning framework that represents each English word by a vector. The geometric relationship between these vectors captures meaningful semantic relationships between the corresponding words. In this paper, we develop a framework to demonstrate how the temporal dynamics of the embedding helps to quantify changes in stereotypes and attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States. We integrate word embeddings trained on 100 y of text data with the US Census to show that changes in the embedding track closely with demographic and occupation shifts over time. The embedding captures societal shifts-e.g., the women's movement in the 1960s and Asian immigration into the United States-and also illuminates how specific adjectives and occupations became more closely associated with certain populations over time. Our framework for temporal analysis of word embedding opens up a fruitful intersection between machine learning and quantitative social science., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Excellence in research requires careful attention to sex and gender analysis. The Gendered Innovations project, initiated in 2009, develops state-of-the-art methods of sex and gender analysis for basic and applied research. This chapter reviews recent developments in cardiovascular disease for (1) analyzing sex, (2) analyzing gender, and (3) policy initiatives.

Gender and sex analysis is increasingly recognized as a key factor in creating better medical research and health care 1-7 . Using a sample of more than 1.5 million medical research papers, our study examined the potential link between women's participation in medical science and attention to gender-related and sex-related factors in disease-specific research. Adjusting for variations across countries, disease topics and medical research areas, we compared the participation of women authors in studies that do and do not involve gender and sex analysis. Overall, our results show a robust positive correlation between women's authorship and the likelihood of a study including gender and sex analysis. These findings corroborate discussions of how women's participation in medical science links to research outcomes, and show the mutual benefits of promoting both the scientific advancement of women and the integration of gender and sex analysis into medical research.

Michael Stolberg claims there was a broad movement in the sixteenth century toward sexing skeletons and offers Felix Platter's singular 1583 female skeleton and Caspar Bauhin's 1597 reproduction of that skeleton as evidence. He admits that these illustrations did not become a standard feature of anatomical textbooks, though he maintains (erroneously) that the descriptions of these skeletons became "canonical." Stolberg does not appreciate the extent to which Platter's female skeleton was an anomaly. Distinctively female-sexed skeletons flooded Europe after about 1730, and, importantly, anatomists at the time perceived that these depictions were radically new. Indeed, widespread and protracted debates erupted over the exact features of the female skeleton. These anatomical illustrations emerged within a novel political climate, where sex in the body was newly seen as grounding gender roles in new social regimes. The story of the European study of sexual differences is not one of slow and steady accretion of positive knowledge, as Stolberg implies. That story is fraught with changing reinterpretations and relocations of difference, and new meanings attached to new kinds of sameness and difference within differing cultural contexts. It is wrong to judge foundational shifts in scientific culture merely by firsts.