Why Gender Bias in Medical Research is Bad for the Economy with Carolee Lee
Nothing stops you in your tracks and brings you back to reality faster than some startling facts, such as 66% of Alzheimer’s patients are women, but only 12% of the National Institute of Health Alzheimer’s research budget went to women-focused research; Or how women are 50% more likely to die in the year following a heart attack than men, but only 4.5% of the NIH coronary artery disease budget went to women-focused research.
Those are just a few of the realities that Carolee Lee espouses. She’s the founder, CEO, and chair of Women’s Health Access Matters. She commissioned The RAND Corporation to create a series of reports showing the economic impact of accelerating women’s health research. And, it is waking up the medical community faster than a strong cup of coffee. One of the top trends in global wellness this year is closing the gender gap in research with the help of tech, and Carolee is at the forefront of that.
As the founder of a jewelry and accessories company which she ran for 30 years with mostly female employees, she learned firsthand that “women’s health is an economic issue that none of us can afford to ignore.” Women make up half of the workforce and, even more so, make up most of the economic spending. When you look at the data it becomes clear: Women drive economies.
WHAM was founded with the goal of accomplishing three things: Creating The WHAM Investigator’s Fund to raise money for research, creating The WHAM Collaborative that brings together the leaders in women’s health and the study of sex difference, and creating The WHAM Report, a data-driven compendium to provide the impact of increasing investment in women’s health research and how it will change women’s lives, their families, and the economy.
WHAM is using data to uncover the gender discrepancies that exist in medical research and to underscore that without fixing those, we cannot be well as a society. Find out why nearly every woman will eventually be affected by one of four areas of medical research that WHAM is funding – brain health, heart health, autoimmune disease and cancer. Their research has already shown that research can actually change outcomes!
If you want to be a part of this important change, visit WHAM’s website and see how you can help fund the future of research.
To learn more, visit WHAM’s site at TheWHAMReport.org.
Resources:
- thewhamreport.org
- whamnow.org
- Follow Carolee on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolee-lee-2355aa14
- https://connorscenter.bwh.harvard.edu
Hosted by Kim Marshall