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Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health

Background: Gender bias has been an ongoing issue in health care, examples being underrepresentation of women in health studies, trivialization of women's physical complaints, and discrimination in the awarding of research grants. We examine here a different issue—gender disparity when it comes...

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Autor principal: Mirin, Arthur A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8290307/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33232627
http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2020.8682
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author Mirin, Arthur A.
author_facet Mirin, Arthur A.
author_sort Mirin, Arthur A.
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description Background: Gender bias has been an ongoing issue in health care, examples being underrepresentation of women in health studies, trivialization of women's physical complaints, and discrimination in the awarding of research grants. We examine here a different issue—gender disparity when it comes to the allocation of research funding among diseases. Materials and Methods: We perform an analysis of funding by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to ascertain possible gender disparity in its allocation of funds across diseases. We normalize funding level to disease burden, as measured by the Disability Adjusted Life Year, and we specifically consider diseases for which both disease burden and funding level are provided. We apply a power-law regression analysis to model funding commensurate with disease burden. Results: We find that in nearly three-quarters of the cases where a disease afflicts primarily one gender, the funding pattern favors males, in that either the disease affects more women and is underfunded (with respect to burden), or the disease affects more men and is overfunded. Moreover, the disparity between actual funding and that which is commensurate with burden is nearly twice as large for diseases that favor males versus those that favor females. A chi-square test yields a p-value of 0.015, suggesting that our conclusions are representative of the full NIH disease portfolio. Conclusions: NIH applies a disproportionate share of its resources to diseases that affect primarily men, at the expense of those that affect primarily women.
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spelling pubmed-82903072021-07-20 Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health Mirin, Arthur A. J Womens Health (Larchmt) Original Articles Background: Gender bias has been an ongoing issue in health care, examples being underrepresentation of women in health studies, trivialization of women's physical complaints, and discrimination in the awarding of research grants. We examine here a different issue—gender disparity when it comes to the allocation of research funding among diseases. Materials and Methods: We perform an analysis of funding by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to ascertain possible gender disparity in its allocation of funds across diseases. We normalize funding level to disease burden, as measured by the Disability Adjusted Life Year, and we specifically consider diseases for which both disease burden and funding level are provided. We apply a power-law regression analysis to model funding commensurate with disease burden. Results: We find that in nearly three-quarters of the cases where a disease afflicts primarily one gender, the funding pattern favors males, in that either the disease affects more women and is underfunded (with respect to burden), or the disease affects more men and is overfunded. Moreover, the disparity between actual funding and that which is commensurate with burden is nearly twice as large for diseases that favor males versus those that favor females. A chi-square test yields a p-value of 0.015, suggesting that our conclusions are representative of the full NIH disease portfolio. Conclusions: NIH applies a disproportionate share of its resources to diseases that affect primarily men, at the expense of those that affect primarily women. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 2021-07-01 2021-07-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8290307/ /pubmed/33232627 http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2020.8682 Text en © Arthur A. Mirin 2021; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License [CC-BY-NC] (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) ) which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Mirin, Arthur A.
Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health
title Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health
title_full Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health
title_fullStr Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health
title_full_unstemmed Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health
title_short Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health
title_sort gender disparity in the funding of diseases by the u.s. national institutes of health
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8290307/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33232627
http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2020.8682
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