The APGO and Ford Foundation Women�s Health Care Competencies Awards

Taking Further Steps to Include Sex and Gender Differences in the Curriculum

(Click here to download PDF of this press release.)

The Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics (APGO) Women's Healthcare Education Office (WHEO) is pleased to announce the five schools selected to receive the APGO/Ford Foundation Women's Health Care Competencies Awards. The recipients are:

• Indiana University School of Medicine
• Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
• University of Colorado School of Medicine
• University of Minnesota Medical School
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

The schools were selected from thirty-four applications from U.S. allopathic medical schools (125 schools in total) and one from a U.S. osteopathic medical school (19 schools in total). Applicants represented schools across the country, with a strong geographic and program size mix.

The award goal is to optimize women's health care by teaching medical students how to recognize and address sex- and gender-based differences as they relate to the health of individuals and of populations. Over the past few years, through interdisciplinary retreats sponsored by the APGO WHEO, Competencies and learning objectives were developed and are included in the resource Women's Health Care Competencies for Medical Students: Taking Steps to Include Sex and Gender Differences in the Curriculum.

Through the Ford Foundation's support, the five schools will develop demonstration projects to help integrate the Women's Health Care Competencies into their respective medical school curricula with the intent of evaluating their impact on the education of their medical students. Members of the APGO Multidisciplinary Women's Health Education Task Force reviewed and selected the programs whose faculty and resources showed the most promise for successful integration of the Women's Health Care Competencies.

APGO will work with the recipients to: 1) replace traditional "gender and culture neutral" medical education with curricula reflecting "gender mainstreaming;" 2) initiate and manage curricular change, using the paradigm of ongoing competency assessment; and 3) foster interdisciplinary, patient-centered medical education programs using models which are readily adaptable to other medical schools, and to the effective practice of comprehensive women's health care.

With the implementation and evaluation of the APGO Women's Health Care Competencies at the five schools, we will begin to see how the Competencies can be used to: strengthen these medical schools' capacity to prepare future physicians to: provide health care to women that addresses sex and gender differences; advance medical students understanding of sex and gender differences in relation to diagnosis, treatment, disease prevention and health promotion; and provide support for projects that advance the field of women's health medical education. With the generous support from The Ford Foundation, the APGO Women's Healthcare Education Office (WHEO) will be able to move closer to this end. This dynamic model of curricular development, implementation and assessment has the potential to influence medical education beyond the grant-winning institutions and ultimately impact the health care of all women.

Questions
Roberta Rusch, MPH
WHEO Director
rrusch@apgo.org
(410)451-9560; (703)815-3111