ORWH Hosts 50th Advisory Committee Meeting, Virtually

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A screenshot of National Academy of Sciences president Dr. Marcia McNutt presenting during ORWH's virtual advisory committee meeting.

The Office of Research on Women’s Health hosted a virtual meeting of the NIH advisory committee on research on women’s health on Apr. 21. ORWH director Dr. Janine Clayton provided opening comments that acknowledged the global changes that have occurred as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. She reviewed early Covid-19 data relevant to ORWH’s mission, including some initial sex-specific findings. For example, more men are dying of Covid-19 than women, and of the 210 nations and territories reporting on Covid-19 cases and deaths, only 19 are disaggregating the data by sex. 

Clayton also described NIH’s efforts to mitigate the problem of maternal morbidity and mortality, particularly from the life course perspective. 

Dr. Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, delivered the keynote address, detailing challenges to and possible solutions for women in the sciences. Her speech focused on the findings and recommendations from Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine: Opening Doors—a consensus study report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine—and other consensus studies on women in science. She described women achieving parity in medical schools and other science graduate programs, women’s attrition from science careers, sexual harassment and career mentorship. 

Following the keynote address, Dr. Carrie Wolinetz, acting chief of staff to the NIH director and associate director for science policy at NIH, gave a presentation on “NIH Efforts on Changing the Culture of Science to Maximize Talent and End Harassment.” 

More information on the 50th meeting of the committee is available on the ORWH website. A videocast of the meeting is available at https://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=35545&bhcp=1.