Inclusion of Women in Clinical Research Benefits Everyone

New Haven, CT - After years of women receiving inadequate health treatment from diseases that affect both men and women, research in gender-specific biological health differences is growing. It was not until 1993 that the National Institute of Health, the largest source of biomedical research funding in this country, began requiring researchers to consider including women as participants in clinical research studies. According to a National Academy of Sciences report, prior to the mid-1990s, "fully two-thirds of all diseases that affect both women and men had been studied exclusively in men".

Women's Health Research at Yale was founded to address these disparities by initiating and nurturing groundbreaking research focusing on the health of women and sex-specific aspects of health and disease.

Why Focus on Women's Health and Sex Differences?

With sex appropriate research, women can access information and treatment which directly affects them.

It is important to understand disorders that:

• Are prevalent in women such as: depression, breast cancer, osteoporosis, eating disorders, and lupus
• Are becoming more common for women such as: smoking, workplace stress, HIV exposure
• Are unique to women such as: ovarian cancer, cardiovascular risk in pregnancy, postpartum disorders, menopausal conditions
• Affect men and women differently such as: acute coronary syndromes, drug addiction, civilian trauma

With the importance of health and sex differences realized, medical research is moving in the right direction. Advancing health research for women across medical and psychosocial disciplines in order to generate new and useful scientific knowledge about women's health is a major goal for Women's Health Research at Yale. An equally important goal is to communicate information, derived through research, to both the medical/scientific community and the general public.

About Women's Health Research at Yale

Women's Health Research at Yale initiates and supports interdisciplinary scientific investigations in women's health and the sex differences in health and disease. Significant improvements in health care can be made when innovative, collaborative research knowledge is translated into medical and personal practice. Women's Health Research at Yale has provided $3.6 million of pilot funding to investigators studying previously unexplored areas of women's health, and this work has resulted in over $15.5 million of new external funding channeled directly into our researchers' labs and clinical settings.