A gap in information surrounding conditions like endometriosis, pelvic floor disorders, migraines, and chronic fatigue syndrome is harming women's health, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
"Advances in our understanding of conditions like Alzheimer's, heart disease, and even chronic pain have largely been shaped by research focused on men," Eve Higginbotham, MD, lead author of the new National Academies report, and professors at vice dean of inclusion and diversity at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Inconsistencies with national surveillance population studies and a "significant" lack of data on how these chronic conditions that are specific to women affect them, is urgently needed and overdue, according to the July 10 news release. Advancements into research have not come as quickly in this area, but the National Academies is calling for that to change.
"It is clear that the status quo in research on chronic conditions in women is not acceptable, as it is not meeting patients' needs and is holding back efforts to achieve health equity," Victor Dzau, MD, president of the National Academy of Medicine, stated in the release. "Enhanced research efforts would improve diagnosis and care, and spur a wave of new advances in areas of women's health that have been chronically underfunded and ignored."
Specifically, the National Academies is calling for improvements in research, data and understanding from the National Institutes of Health across the seven following areas:
- Enhancing diagnostic tools for women's health.
- Deeper understanding female-specific factors like reproductive milestones and menstruation, as well as menopause and how those may play a role along with overall health.
- Understanding more about the biology of chronic conditions as they present in women's bodies.
- Understanding that women are more likely to have multiple chronic conditions than men.
- Additional research into how chronic conditions affect women directly and indirectly.
- More information about early life expectancies, lifestyle experiences, physical trauma, violence experiences, and disparities.
- Enhanced research into inequities that result from bias, racism, discrimination and stigma, and on solutions to dismantle those in order to provide more supportive, gender-centric care.
The report, overall, reflects that "at best, this means we don't fully understand how these conditions affect women — but at worst, it can mean a misdiagnosis, medical error, or inappropriate treatment," Dr. Higginbotham said.