“The Unfair Sex,” Cedars-Sinai’s special report on gender bias and gender inequities in healthcare, was featured in the Winter 2020 issue of Discoveries, the organization’s flagship magazine. Through interviews with physicians, researchers and patients, the report provides a brief history and purpose of one of Cedars-Sinai’s newest centers, the Center for Research and Education of Women’s Health and Sex Differences. Led by a team of female faculty members, the center was created specifically to promote and fund research into sex differences, women’s health, and the biological differences between men and women. This groundbreaking research is already helping to close the gender gap in medicine, with clinical trial representation, changes in medical school curricula, and the high-quality healthcare provided to women.
From the Judges
The thesis of Cedars-Sinai’s special report on gender bias and gender inequities in healthcare can be summed up with this quote from the story: “The pharmaceutical industry and medical practitioners treat women as if they are just smaller men. They are not.” And the writers do a great job building the case, tackling different facets of the problem through a mix of reporting on research and human-interest stories. “I love the mix of longer pieces and digestible nuggets,” remarked one judge. The series strikes a good balance between highlighting the life-saving (and affirming) work that Cedars-Sinai’s Center for Research in Women’s Health and Sex Differences is doing to address gender bias in medicine and healthcare, and sharing the deeply personal stories of actual patients.
