Women's Health - Missing from U.S. Medicine (Paperback)

The male-centered focus of clinical research has led to the understudy and underfunding of women's diseases; the exclusion of women from experimental drug trials; and the failure to understand the health of the elderly, who are mostly female. "Women's Health" critiques male-focused medical research and health care practice and explores solutions available through medical education to make women's health and well-being share the focus of the medical mission. Sue Rosser begins her critique by examining ethical problems raised by an androcentric focus in clinical research. Then, she examines the problems such a focus raises in internal medicine, psychiatry, and obstetrics and gynecology. Chapters trace the origins of gender bias in clinical specialty research to its roots in the related basic science discipline. The next three chapters underline the profound effects that the understudy of women's health has for particular subpopulations of women. Virtually no research has been undertaken that acknowledges the diversity among women; minority women, lesbians, and elderly women largely have been ignored in the scant research that has centered on women's health needs. In the last section of the book, means of overcoming these biases are proposed through implementation of changes in methodologies, curricula, classroom and clinical climates, teaching methods, and evaluation in medical education. Sure Rosser is a feminist medical educator with a mission - a mission to decenter the current medical model in order to make it more inclusive and human.