FIRST-EVER NATIONAL CENTERS OF LEADERSHIP IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE ESTABLISHED BY THE OFFICE ON WOMEN’S HEALTH IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

The Office on Women’s Health (OWH) today announced the creation of four National Centers of Leadership in Academic Medicine that will be demonstration projects to promote gender equity in medicine and leadership advancement of junior faculty. The centers were chosen after a nationwide solicitation in which academic medical centers were offered an opportunity to submit information on their mentoring programs.

The OWH has awarded approximately $300,000 for the development of these Centers, which are located at: Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in Philadelphia; East Carolina University School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina; Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee; and University of California at San Diego School of Medicine.

"The National Centers of Leadership in Academic Medicine are part of our commitment to level the playing field for talented young women and men in medicine," said Wanda Jones, Dr. P.H., Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health (Women’s Health) in the Department of Health and Human Services. "If we create an environment in academic medicine that encourages the best and the brightest to rise to leadership positions, then all of us as a nation will benefit."

These Centers will serve as model programs, chosen on the basis of their potential capacity for implementing recommendations developed by the National Task Force on Mentoring for Female Health Care Professionals, convened by the OWH to lower career barriers traditionally faced by women in medicine. The Task Force, made up of representatives from health professional organizations and federal agencies, requested the creation of a comprehensive national program and developed concrete recommendations for a national commitment to the importance of mentoring for both men and women in academic medicine.

The Task Force culminated in the National Workshop on Women and Men in Medical Careers, sponsored by the OWH in May of 1998. At that meeting, over 100 senior faculty members from the nation’s medical schools met with the Task Force to discuss mentoring program guidelines, as well as roles and responsibilities of mentors and junior faculty interested in the program.

Previous studies, including one of over 4,000 full-time faculty, have demonstrated that having a mentor is a positive predictor of career satisfaction and success. Women now constitute 40% of medical school students, and will make up nearly a third of practicing physicians in just ten years, yet there are few role models within their academic institutions. By 1996, fewer than 10% of women faculty were full medical school professors, compared to 31% of men faculty. Eighteen percent of women faculty are at the lowest teaching level, instructor, compared to 8% of men. The lag in advancement does not merely reflect the composition of the faculty. One study looked at new full-time faculty appointed in 1976, and found that only 10% of the women rose to the rank of full professor by 1991, compared to 22% of the men.

The Office on Women’s Health (OWH) provides national leadership in advancing women’s health through public policy, research, service delivery, and education. The Office is a catalyst for developing new National and regional initiatives to improve women’s health, including eighteen Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health that serve as models for integrated and comprehensive women’s health care services and research.

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