The Reporter: April 1997, Vol.8, No.2
Partnership in Gender-Specific Medicine

Dr. Marianne Legato, director of the new Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia

P&S and Procter & Gamble have announced a partnership to advance a new frontier in health care based on insights into the biological differences between women and men other than the differences in reproductive organs. That new area, known as gender-specific medicine, holds exciting promise for scientific discovery and improved health. The collaboration, called the Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia, will be under the direction of Dr. Marianne J. Legato, P&S associate professor of clinical medicine.

The first projects, funded by an unrestricted grant from P&G, will look at gender-specific differences in heart function and bone metabolism. Other research will address questions such as why certain diseases are more prevalent in women and why some drugs are less effective and sometimes fatal to women. "Historically, medical research has been conducted primarily in males, leaving us with an insufficient, largely male model of biology and disease that's been applied to treat women without modification," says Dr. Legato. The first step of the partnership will be to gather all information about gender-based biological differences into a central data base.

The data base, called Genspec, will help set directions for future research and provide a foundation for educating both medical and lay communities about the significant differences between men and women.

"The Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia will advance the study and practical use of gender-specific approaches to health care," says Dr. Herbert Pardes, vice president and dean. "By combining the assets of a world-renowned medical school with a leading worldwide developer of health care products, we will do much to close the gender gap in medicine."

Dr. Legato is a practicing internist, cardiovascular researcher, author, lecturer, and specialist in women's health. She wrote the first book on gender differences in coronary artery disease, "The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Coronary Artery Disease."

Other leaders of the partnership are associate directors Dr. John P. Bilezikian, P&S professor of medicine and pharmacology, and Dr. Michael R. Rosen, the Gustavus A. Pfeiffer Professor of Pharmacology and P&S professor of pediatrics. Partnership advisory board co-chairs are Dr. Myron L. Weisfeldt, the Samuel Bard Professor and Chairman of Medicine at P&S, and Craig B. Wynett, director of corporate new ventures for Procter & Gamble.

The gender-specific approach to health care will not exclude men. On the contrary, information about the mechanisms by which men resist diseases that devastate women may be fundamentally useful to both genders. The partnership also will make gender-specific biology available to health care professionals and the public through professional symposia, position papers, an Internet web site, and medical and consumer books. Easy-to-understand, disease-specific educational tools are being created to help women obtain the best care and ask doctors the right questions. The first of these tools addresses heart disease.

(More information on the Partner-ship for Women's Health at Columbia is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.pg.com.)