Pediatric hospitalist form non-profit to advance women in the field

A diverse group of pediatric hospitalists are ready to push women’s interests to the forefront of pediatric medicine as well as create greater work equity for female physicians in the field with the launch of Advance PHM.

“We aim to be advocates for women’s advancement in the field,” said Dr. Jennifer, O’Toole, a member of the Advance PHM Steering Committee. The non-profit will partner with other medical and non-medical organizations that promote both the interests of pediatric hospitalists and gender equity.

“Our group began formally meeting in the late summer of 2019. While the initial calls started with a small group of women, we expanded to ensure we had sufficient diversity based upon institution, race, location and time in practice, and leadership roles.”

“There is a lack of unified approach to equity and advocacy efforts, and we want to change that,” Dr. O’Toole said. “One of our goals is the identification and mitigation of biases against women as well as to be a stable source of data on women in PHM.”

The events surrounding the ABP PHM exam eligibility provided further push for a proactive, strategic, and metric-based approach to advocating and promoting women in PHM. “Given the large number of women practicing in pediatrics, and more specifically in PHM, we are in a unique position to lead and achieve true systematic change when it comes to achieving gender equity in medicine,” says Dr. O’Toole. “We can create a path for other specialties to follow.”

Advance PHM has invited a group of men with key connections to PHM to join the organization and help develop the framework of the organization in addition to promoting a standard of inclusivity for the organization.

“We also recognize the intersectionality of women to other groups that face inequity and bias based upon their race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, and pledge to partner with other organizations working on behalf of those groups during our efforts.”