Barbara Cole, Dept. of Pediatrics was elected to the council of the national organization "Women in Nephrology".

Rosa Davila, Dept. of Pathology, was promoted to Director of Cytopathology, Washington University Medical Center.

Teresa Vietti, Dept. of Pediatrics received the 1994 Distinguished Career Award from the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.

Susan Wente, Dept. of Cell Biology and Physiology, was a featured speaker at the "Women in Science and Engineering Conference" in Emmetsburg, Iowa. The conference is designed to encourage young women to pursue careers in mathematics, science, engineering or technology.

The Program in Physical Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has been ranked as the top physical therapy graduate school in the country by U.S. News and World Report. To arrive at the rankings, U.S. News sent questionnaires to deans, top administrators and senior faculty of accredited physical therapy schools. Respondents were asked to rank the reputations of accredited schools by placing them into one of four quartiles of academic quality. Rankings were based on the average scores. AWN member Susan Deusinger, Ph.D. is the director of the Program in Physical Therapy.

U.S. News also ranked the top research-oriented medical schools. Medical schools were evaluated according to national reputation, research activity, faculty resources and student selectivity. Washington University School of Medicine retained its rank of number five overall and its number one position in student selectivity. Student selectivity is a quality measure that reflects the entering class's undergraduate grade-point average and scores on admissions exams.

The Department of Internal Medicine at Washington University is also listed among the nation's best. It is ranked as fifth in the country by U.S. News, following the internal medicine departments at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UCSF and Duke.

"If studies on lab rates are any guide, alcohol use by a father may hurt the development of his children." This was reported last January in the Post Dispatch. The study, published in the journal "Life Sciences", was led by Theodore Cicero. Cicero has recommended that physicians encountering fetal development problems consider alcohol use by the father as a factor, much as use by the mother is widely considered now. "If someone is having difficulty with fertility or is having miscarriages later in the process, there may be some link to the lifestyle of the father," Cicero said. However, evidently physicians working with high risk pregnancies are resistant to raising questions about the prospective father's alcohol use.

The New York Times recently reported that researchers are trying to reconcile how much exercise is good for men. The article also acknowledged that men and women differ in their aerobic capacities. However, even when the question of how much exercise is good for men is resolved, like so many studies, women were not included. So, we still don't know how this would apply to women. "Few studies have examined the life-saving effects of exercise in women," the Times reported.

While on the subject of inequities, exercise and women's health, The National Women's Health Report states that "young female runners complain about the difficulty in finding comfortable running shoes, despite the fact that women represent a major portion of the athletic shoe market. Few manufacturers offer a female athletic shoe shaped like a female foot. Most of the shoes promoted as a "women's model" of an athletic shoe are just scaled down versions of the male shoe with some cosmetic changes. Many foot and ankle injuries experienced by active women are a direct result of this process. (This inequity poses a bigger risk for older female runners.)

Bernadine Healy, M.D., former director of NIH and now editor of the "Journal of Women's Health", wrote in a recent editorial that what women want is "to close the knowledge gap and build communication bridges on women's health throughout our medical community." Clearly, we need to close the gap from life-threatening illnesses to running shoes--and every women's health issue in between.

The Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues is severely weakened. However, Congresswomen are continuing to meet. (It would be unconstitutional to forbid meetings.) It is still a bipartisan group, but without a budget and no staff. Nita Lowey, (D-NY) and Constance Morello (R-MD) are the co-chairs.

On February 13, AWN sponsored a panel discussion and open conversation regarding the clinician track. The panel members were: Diane Merritt, Associate Professor on the Clinician Track in the Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Kathleen McGann, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics on the Clinician Track in the Division of Infectious Diseases, and moderator, Penelope Shackelford, Professor of Pediatrics in the Dept. of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Shackelford gave a brief review of the number of faculty appointed to the Clinician Track since its inception two years ago. Data were provided by Dr. Jim Crane, Associate Vice Chancellor and Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs. There are 104 individuals on the Clinician Track at all appointment levels ranging from Instructor to Professor. This represents approximately 10% of the total faculty (1060). Of these, 34% are women. Of the total faculty, 231 (22%) are women. (This number includes faculty at the level of instructor and above in all three tracks.) There are no data regarding the number of individuals initially appointed to this track or switching from the investigator track to the clinician track.

Dr. Merritt discussed the impact of the clinician track in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, noting that it appears to have increased advancement opportunities for women interested in clinical work and teaching. She emphasized that it will be important to track the progress and continued promotion of these individuals. Dr. McGann, who joined the faculty in September 1994, discussed her own personal decision to select the clinician track and emphasized that it gave her the opportunity to prioritize the areas of medicine that are most attractive to her--the clinical care of complicated patients and teaching. Both Dr. Merritt and Dr. McGann discussed their interest in participating in clinical research projects.

The audience included 30 to 40 individuals and the most common questions were related to criteria for promotion along the track. The panel urged all faculty members: 1) to read the written criteria for promotion published in October 1992 for both the investigator and clinical tracks; and, 2) to request an annual review of their performance by the departmental chairman. They should clarify how they are progressing with respect to the criteria for promotion. A concern expressed by a number of individuals in the audience was whether it would now be more difficult for individuals to be promoted on the investigator track on the basis of clinical research. All in all, it was a lively discussion and we concluded that it will be important in the future to monitor the rate of promotion along this track compared to the investigator track, as well as the numbers of individuals switching from one track to another. We asked that anyone interested in working on an ad hoc committee to investigate how to measure performance for promotion on the clinician track to contact Dr. Shackelford at 454-6050 or Dr. Barbara Cole at 454-6043.

In the April 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Bonnie J. Tesch and colleagues report on the results of a study carried out to "assess possible explanations for the finding that the percentage of women medical school faculty members holding associate or full professor rank remains well below the percentage of men." For their study, the authors surveyed 153 women and 263 men first appointed to medical school faculties between 1979 and 1981. Those surveyed were matched for institutions of original faculty appointment. They examined the academic rank achieved, career preparation, academic resources at first appointment, familial responsibilities and academic productivity of the faculty surveyed.

"After a mean of 11 years on a medical school faculty, 59% of women compared with 83% of men had achieved associate or full professor rank, and 5% of women compared with 23% of men had achieved full professor rank. Women and men reported similar preparation for an academic career, but women began their careers with fewer academic resources. The number of children was not associated with rank achieved. Women worked about 10% fewer hours per week and had authored fewer publications. After adjustment for productivity factors, women remained less likely to be associate or full professors (adjusted odds ratio = 0.37) or to achieve full professor rank (adjusted odds ratio = 0.27). " Based on their results the authors conclude that women physician medical school faculty are promoted more slowly than men. Gender differences in rank achieved are not explained by productivity or by differential attrition from academic medicine.

An accompanying article by Catherine DeAngelis, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty, and Michael Johns, Dean of the Medical Faculty and Vice President for Medicine, at Johns Hopkins recounted the experience at that institution regarding pay equity and promotions for women (JAMA 273: 1056-7). In 1987 De Angelis studied the status of women at the Hopkins School of Medicine and identified discrepancies between female and male faculty members in salaries and academic ranks. Since that time, an annual review has been conducted and recommendations have been made for improvement, many of which have been implemented. One area of improvement involved salary inequities. With the encouragement of the dean, salary equity was achieved by the 1991-1992 academic year, and it remains equitable.

The overall discrepancy in academic rank is more difficult to resolve. Currently, only 5% of women faculty at Johns Hopkins are professors and 19% are associate professors compared with 20% and 27% of men. In more than 100 years, only 36 women have achieved professorship. However, 15 of them have done so in the past five years.

The absolute numbers of women associate professors have doubled from 33 to 69 in the past 5 years. This growth in higher ranks for women was accompanied by concomitant changes in the number and percentage of women at the assistant professor rank from 103 in 1988-1989 to 120 in 1993-1994.

Investigation of the professorial and associate professorial promotions committees during the past 5 years has revealed no gender bias at that level; rather, the problems with promotions had been occurring at the departmental levels. Stated another way, women had not been nominated for promotion at the same rate as men. To heighten the awareness of the department chairs, since 1987 the Status of Women Report has been presented annually to the Medical School Advisory Board, comprised of all department chairs and others. As a result, several department chairs have made special efforts to study and remedy gender discrepancies in their own departments.

The opportunities for leadership within the institution were also addressed. Since 1990-1991, women have been appointed to every major committee in The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, including search committees for department chairs and the promotions committees. Currently, 21% of the members of the Associate Professors' Promotions Committee and 26% of those on the Professors' Promotion Committee are women.

In addition, in 1995 the Women's Leadership Council was formed. All women Professors in The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine are members and the vice dean for academic affairs and faculty is the chair. This council had led and/or supported the formation of a women's group within almost every clinical department, and a special group has been formed for women in the basic science departments. Monthly or bimonthly meetings are held by these groups to serve as forums for advancing women's careers. The current project of the Women's Leadership Council is to provide individual mentorship for every woman associate professor who has been at that rank for at least 3 years.