Dr Mariana Garcia: We Need to Address the Lack of Women Leaders in Guideline Creation and Clinical Trial Leadership

Barriers to authorship and to adequate representation of women in heart failure–focused clinical trials need to be addressed, because this has hindered us making inroads to understanding heart disease among women, noted Mariana Garcia, MD, cardiology fellow in the Academic Clinical Investigator Pathway at Emory University and member of T32, Multidisciplinary Research Training to Reduce Inequalities in Cardiovascular Health (METRIC).

Transcript

Can you speak to the study from last year that noted a lack of women authorship in heart failure–focused clinical trials and guidelines?

You know, adequate representation of women in clinical trials is a huge goal of the group [T32]. We know that, overall, the barriers not only to authorship, but representation of women leaders in guideline creation and clinical trial leadership needs to be addressed. But overall, I think we are very aware now, and the alarm has been rung, that adequate representation of women in clinical trials has hindered the progress of understanding women’s heart disease.

And I think we are at a point where there are very strong advocates out there working toward increasing awareness of this problem. Not only that, but [also] sounding the alarm for the urgent need for adequate inclusion of women in trials and appropriate analysis of sex-specific data from these clinical trials. I look up to a lot of these women, [these] cardiologist leaders that are leading the way toward improvement of this.