June 10 will mark the 30-year anniversary of the U.S. Congress' passage of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act, which required the inclusion of women in federally funded research.
As a result, progress has been made in advancing women's health over the past 30 years, but there are still knowledge gaps, especially in diseases or disorders in which women are disproportionately affected, such as lung cancer, Alzheimer's disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
Nicole Woitowich, research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who studies gender parity in research, said biomedical research still lags far behind clinical research.
"Even though women are included in clinical research, biomedical scientists still routinely fail to analyze data by sex and gender," Woitowich said. "This is a stage when it's vitally important, before drugs and therapies get developed.
"When we fail to analyze data by sex or gender, we are leaving half of our knowledge about human health and disease on the table. We have no way of knowing if certain treatments or therapies work better in one sex or the other, and, if so, how we can tailor them to improve the health of all people."
