I grew up in a bit of a gender equity
bubble let me explain to you what I mean
when I was a kid I used to spend my
weekends rounding with my dad a vascular
surgeon in the hospital I knew from the
time I was five years old that I wanted
to be a doctor my parents instilled in
me a very strong sense of equity and
equality
I knew that boys and girls were equal
men and women deserved equity and
equality if I worked hard I knew that I
would be rewarded for my hard work if I
faced a challenge or a barrier that was
because I needed to improve myself I
needed to work harder I needed to make
sure that my knowledge base was secure
and by doing so I knew that I would be
treated as if I was valued and with
merit and as if I deserved to be where I
meant what was meant to be because I
worked to get there I knew there were in
equity issues in gender I knew feminism
existed but not in health care because
we're scientists and scientists work on
objectivity and facts where physicians
were empathic we treat our patients
equally regardless of their background
their gender their socioeconomic status
that's what medicine was to me
fast-forward a couple decades down the
road I finished college medical school
residency fellowship and I'm now a
triple board-certified hematology and
oncology physician sitting in a meeting
talking about an initiative that I have
spearheaded founded and worked my behind
off on and I was told that I could not
be the representative for this
initiative and I was confused the answer
came a couple of seconds later when
someone in the room said well dr. Jane
we just don't want another pretty face
out there and I thought to myself huh
that doesn't sound right
and I started to look back at the last
decade and a half of my life and I
wondered if some of the challenges and
the barriers that I was facing wasn't
due to the fact that I wasn't good
enough was because I was in a system
that put those barriers in places where
they really shouldn't be I started
talking to more women in healthcare and
the anecdotes that were shared were very
similar to things that I had heard hey
honey are your ovaries getting a little
bit old shouldn't be popping out some
kids by now maybe you should wait for
that leadership position until your kids
are in college or my favorite why on
earth would you go to medical school
take a spot from an equally qualified
male candidate when everyone knows
you're just gonna get married have kids
and go work part time or leave medicine
all together now full disclosure I did
meet my husband in medical school but
that is not why I decided to become a
physician now these anecdotes are very
powerful but the evidence that gender
inequities exist in healthcare is
indisputable and as a physician that
evidence is really important to me when
I'm presented a patient or a problem
first I diagnose the problem after I
diagnose the problem I want to come up
with some solutions or a treatment plan
and then we implement that plan to find
a solution or a cure gender and equity
in healthcare is a systemic problem and
it needs to be fixed the time for a
gender moonshot in healthcare is now I
want to start with a statistic that I
think is really important
since 2017 over half of medical school
enrollees have been women but we aren't
seeing this in our leadership around 21%
of our professors are women less than
20% of our Dean's and department
chairs or women so if we're seeing more
women enter into the medical field why
are we not seeing that representation in
our leadership now I could share with
you hours and hours and hours of data on
the fact that women have been shown to
not receive awards as often as men that
qualified women do not receive
sponsorship or mentorship as often as
men the NIH published a study showing
women received smaller grants and less
grant funding than men women are not
promoted as quickly as men are promoted
a study by Julie's dr. Julie silver and
her colleagues showed that women even in
fields where there are more women than
men such as pediatrics women are not
represented in authorship in pediatric
journals as much as men women are not
invited to speak as plenary speakers or
keynote panelists as often as men so all
that data exists we know that data is
out there I'm gonna share with you a
couple of more subtle examples that you
may not even know exist a great study
came out of Yale a couple years ago
looking at two identical resumes the
only difference between these two
resumes was at the top one said John and
one said Jennifer now what do you think
happened when these two resumes went out
the application was for a science
position in a lab you would think
objectively looking at two identical
resumes that the people would be valued
equally well John was found to be more
competent more hireable more likely to
be mentored and was offered more money
despite the fact the CDs were exactly
the same and this is in a science lab I
want you to picture yourself sitting in
a room that's similar to this one and
you're listening to a moderator
introduced some panelists there four
panelists the first two are men and the
second two are women I would like to
introduce to you dr. Johnson dr. Smith
Kim and Suzanne you have now
automatically put dr. Jon
in dr. Smith in a different category
from Kim and Susanne despite the fact
Kim and Susanne are also physicians they
actually wrote the paper that's gonna be
discussed but you don't know that you
just know that the first two people who
were introduced are physicians and the
second two are on the panel this is not
hyperbole what I'm describing for you
right now research that we published
just last month showed that at a very
large international Oncology conference
women were more likely to be introduced
by their first name than men when
presenting at a national conference and
that automatically makes the audience
think that there's different levels of
expertise so I just shared with you two
more subtle types of examples I'm gonna
give you a factual example based in
research that's more explicit Medscape
came out with a study showing that women
physicians get paid 80 cents on the
dollar compared to men now when you take
that over a career of a general surgeon
that comes out to 2.3 million dollars
that's for the exact same amount of work
exact same number of hours work exact
same amount of time away from family
exact same amount of training exact same
amount of the same time of outcomes
nothing different other than the gender
even in nursing where there are
definitely more women than men we see
this pay disparity now people ask me
well that's all interesting but I don't
identify as a woman and I don't work in
health care why does any of this matter
to me well it should matter to you and
I'm gonna tell you why the NIH has shown
when women advance in medicine women's
health improves so we should be treating
women and men equitably and equally in
health care not just because it's the
right thing to do but also because it's
what's best to do for our patient
population in the 1970s women of
childbearing age were not allowed to be
enrolled in early phase clinical trials
and many women weren't even
that in observational trials it wasn't
until 1993 when Congress passed a law
stating that women needed to be included
in all NIH funded research that that
started to change now just imagine for
decades the research and the science
that we've been using to diagnose
symptoms identify problems in medicine
and treat our patients is based on 50%
of the population and you don't need to
be in health care to know that men and
women are physiologically different so
we're treating people based on 50% of
the population that's a problem so I've
given you a bunch of stats I've given
you a bunch of data I talked about
explicit implicit bias but what's the
solution so in medicine when faced with
an outbreak such as Ebola we don't talk
about solutions 10 20 50 years down the
line we talk about bold action plans now
solutions that make a difference now the
cancer moonshot was launched with the
explicit plan of expediting how quickly
we can start reaching a cure for more
cancers by bringing people together by
being innovative by using scientific
rigor to make real changes so to me in
health care what we need is a gender
moonshot we need to build on the work
and networks and initiatives throughout
the country that have already been
started there are amazing things
happening around this nation working
towards gender equity what we need to do
is harness all of these brilliant minds
and all these initiatives and come
together to create validated metrics
using the scientific rigor we use when
we're trying to cure an outbreak or cure
cancer by creating these metrics we will
be able to hold our leadership
accountable and in result have
institutions that treat our men and our
women equally and in an echo
because it's what's right to do and it's
what's best for our patients we need to
take the same scientific rigor that we
use to treat a disease epidemic and
apply it to the systemic problem that is
gender inequity in health care and that
comes with common-sense solutions so we
don't need some long algorithm to try to
fix this problem common-sense solutions
are as simple as providing child care at
a conference so that a woman who has
children can attend there are all sorts
of common-sense solutions that exist to
try to fix this gender gap and I'm gonna
share with you just a couple today so
the first one I always like to state
promote women quote women invite women
nominate women now when I say that that
does not mean that you should be
inviting women or promoting women who
aren't qualified tokenism doesn't help
anyone we want to bring people to the
table who are the most qualified
candidates it's essential that people
mentor and sponsor and when I say mentor
and sponsor what I mean is looking for
people outside of your normal circle I
give the antidote it was mentioned in my
introduction that I'm the co-chair and
co-founder of the women in medicine
summit when I started the steering
committee I thought that I was being
equitable I had people from every
institution I had people from every
specialty and someone called me and said
you know Shikha this is a really great
initiative have you noticed your entire
steering committee is made up of Indian
women and I said no that's not possible
there's no way I don't even know that
many Indian women and then I looked and
I realized that I had done exactly what
I talked about I had looked within one
circle and so I started to expand my
circle and ask people that I normally
wouldn't have asked and we ended up with
an extremely diverse committee so it's
really important that we identify our
own implicit and unconscious bias and
utilize that to make a more diverse and
heterogeneous population of people were
working with because you may find
qualified candidates outside of your
circle that you might not have
known existed advocating for pay equity
this is a very challenging one because
it requires transparency and it requires
holding leadership accountable and it
requires a conversation and that's a
very challenging conversation to have so
this is one that a lot of people
struggle with advocating for pay equity
can be can be a challenge but it's
important and it's a discussion that
needs to happen identifying barriers
that exist in coming up with
common-sense solutions I gave you a
couple already childcare easy solution a
lot of national medical conferences have
started doing that now and more women
are attending and it's extremely
important that we work towards fixing
the system and not fixing the women in
it because really this is a systemic
problem dr. David Ansel gives us great
quote where to a women and a woman in a
man are walking up an escalator and you
wonder why the woman is falling behind
it's because the woman's walking up a
down escalator women get barriers put in
front of them that we don't even
necessarily see so we need to start
looking for these barriers and working
towards fixing them it took a decade
from the time NASA was founded to when
the first boots were on the moon 50
years later we had the first female
spacewalk just last week we can't wait
50 years to achieve gender equity in
healthcare the time for the gender
moonshot is now and we need to treat
this like the systemic problem it is and
cure the problem of gender inequity in
health care thank you
[Applause]