Editorial: Epidemiologic Approaches to Women's Health

Abstract

Since 1991 when the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) of the National Institutes of Health published the first US women’s health research agenda, the science of women’s health has developed rapidly. Contributors to the first research agenda on women’s health provided a definition demarcating the field: “Women’s health research” referred to studies of health conditions that are specific to women or more common or more serious in women and that have distinct causes, manifestations, outcomes, or treatments in women. Moreover, determinants of health, including biological, psychological, environmental, and sociocultural factors that affect women disproportionately or uniquely, were included in the scope of women’s health research (1, 2). Sex and gender were differentiated in an Institute of Medicine study published after the second women’s health research agenda in 1999 (3): “Sex” refers to the classification of living things as male or female according to their reproductive organs and functions assigned by chromosomal complement, and “gender” refers to a person’s self-representation as male or female or how that person is responded to by social institutions on the basis of that presentation (4). In 2010, the ORWH of the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Medicine both published new reports that promise to shape women’s health research in years to come (4, 5). Results of the ORWH review, Moving Into the Future With New Dimensions and Strategies: A Vision for 2020 for Women’s Health Research, build on the original 1991 agenda and the 1999 update, Agenda for Research on Women’s Health for the 21st Century (3). Six goals for the future were specified in the vision for 2020: