By Barbara M. Alving, MD
2008-05-01
Dr. Alving is Director of the National Center for Research Resources at NIH.
ASH members are at the forefront of addressing the challenge to
ensure opportunities for sustained career success for women entering
biomedical research fields. At a recent NIH conference titled "Women in
Biomedical Careers: Best Practices for Sustaining Career Success,"
Nancy Andrews, MD, PhD, the Dean at Duke University School of Medicine,
not only described the reasons why women are leaving academic medicine
after beginning promising careers as assistant professors, but also
stressed the urgency of ensuring that an extremely valuable and robust
talent pool is maintained and cultivated.
In addition, Timothy Ley, MD, Professor of Medicine at the
Washington University School of Medicine, provided data to show that
women are as successful as men in obtaining research grants, but are
less likely to continue to seek renewed funding. He described the
current academic culture as "patriarchal, developed by men for men."
Speakers from other organizations, such as Ernst & Young and
Deloitte & Touche, discussed their successful programs for ensuring
continued advancement of talented women in the workplace. Both
described aggressive efforts to recruit and retain women, such as
training them for executive positions and providing flexible career
paths and opportunities for telecommuting. Both organizations stated
that they have been actively addressing the need to retain women in the
workforce and enhance diversity for the past 15 years. As a result, in
2007, 33 percent of new partner/principal promotions at Ernst &
Young were women.
Representatives from the academic health centers, one of whom was
Andrew Schafer, MD, Chair of the Department of Medicine at Weill
Cornell, current president of the Association of Professors of
Medicine, and immediate past president of ASH, discussed how they were
promoting sustained career success through providing or advocating for
flexibility in the time for tenure to be achieved and promoting
executive leadership programs and initiatives to enhance work/life
balance.
The NIH, through its Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers,
co-chaired by Drs. Elias Zerhouni and Vivian Pinn, is developing
policies that are in concert with those in universities.
What should professional societies do? Societies and organizations
need to include diversity at all levels. The NIH will work with
professional organizations and universities to track the career
development of women in biomedical research/academic medicine and
develop policies that provide family balance, extension of time in
tenure track positions, and opportunities for executive training. The
loss of talent from the biomedical research workforce is a national
issue of the highest priority and must be addressed by the leaders at
academic health centers, professional organizations, and the federal
government working together. To review the agenda from the meeting and
the speaker presentations, visit the Women in Biomedical Careers Web site.
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