Are Enough Women Involved in Practice-Changing Cardiology Research?

Only 11% of clinical trial leadership committee members are women.

Women are underrepresented in cardiology and in leadership roles in academic medicine. To learn more about the disparity in research, investigators examined cardiovascular clinical trials published in JAMA, Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine from 2014 to 2018.

The authors identified the gender makeup of trial leadership committees, steering committees, and executive committees. In 200 cardiovascular medicine–related trial publications, there were 2433 leadership committee members, of whom 270 were women (11%). More than half of the trials had no women on leadership committees (56%). Women accounted for only 9% of first authors and 10% of last authors on these articles.

Reviewing Author

Fatima Rodriguez, MD, MPH, FACC, FAHA

Disclosures

Consultant/Advisory BoardNovoNordisk; HealthPals; Novartis; Amgen

EquityHealthPals; Carta

Grant/Research SupportNational Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; American Heart Association–Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Editorial BoardsCardiology and Therapy