March-April, 2011
AWAEMAWARENESS A bimonthly update to inform you of the current activities of our Academy in an effort to make this organization a strong advocate for women in academic emergency medicine. Stephanie Abbuhl Gloria Kuhn Alice Mitchell Stacey Poznanski
Table of Contents An Update from the CORD Networking Lunch
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What Are We Up To?
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AWAEM Member Highlight - Julie Welch, MD
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An Update from the RAC
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News You Can Use (Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List)
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Available Committees
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PLEASE JOIN US AT THE
ANNUAL AWAEM LUNCHEON! Be sure to pre-register for the Annual AWAEM Luncheon on June 4th. It occurs during the upcoming SAEM Annual Meeting in Boston (Click here to Register!) The purpose of the luncheon is to network and to recognize the women who are receiving AWAEM awards. Â Table facilitators will be present to assist with networking and to initiate discussions on important academic topics.
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AWAEM AWARENESS March-April, 2011
“Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, far the greatest is the possession of Friendship.” - Epicurious
An Update from the CORD Networking Lunch San Diego, CA, March 4th, 2011 By Gloria Kuhn, DO
AWAEM held a networking lunch during the Council of Residency Director’s (CORD) Academic Assembly. The purpose of the lunch was to facilitate women educators making new friends, seeing old ones, and having the opportunity to discuss matters of importance to women in academic emergency medicine. The lunch was a big success with over 24 women in attendance. The discussions were lively and centered on career issues, balancing life and work, discovering the value of joining AWAEM, and how to become involved as a member. A number of topics were discussed and they are listed below. While they are varied, they have an important theme: what needs to be done to support the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in academics. Attendees also had suggestions for AWAEM activities that would support women educators. Interestingly, AWAEM is already working in many of these areas. See Page 2.
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Stacey Poznanski, who helped coA special thanks to Barbara ordinate the luncheon, and I were Mulder, CORD Executive Director, overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of and Maryanne Greketis, CORD the women who attended. We were Meeting Planner, for their assistance. also happy to discover that the needs voiced by these women are actively being addressed by the Academy. t More than ever, I am convinced that the Academy is needed and will help TOPICS DISCUSSED: many women. The Academy can - Women and wellness provide information, educational - Medical marriages courses, a search for solutions to - Job sharing problems and answers to questions, - Negotiating - Maternity leaves in various and perhaps most importantly, companionship and affirmation that settings: women can fulfill their dreams of University, Contract Groups, having a successful career, a fulfilling Hospital, Locum Tenens - Best practices on various personal life, and can truly make a difference in academic emergency subjects of interest to women in medicine. academics Currently, the Academy is coordinating networking lunches See a list of suggestions made during each of the SAEM Regional and active projects and recent Meetings. Women should attend these accomplishments of AWAEM to meet other women with similar related to those suggestions on concerns and possible solutions, and the following page. more importantly for the friendship and affirmation that the women of academic emergency medicine can provide.
AWAEM AWARENESS March-April, 2011
What Else Are We Up To? Recent and Current AWAEM Projects By Gloria Kuhn, DO & Stacey Poznanski, DO
Attendees at the CORD Networking Luncheon also had suggestions for AWAEM activities that would support women educators. Interestingly, AWAEM is already working in many of these areas:
CORD Luncheon Suggestion
AWAEM Progress...
Gather information on funding sources for research topics of interest, such as women’s health and women in academic careers.
Marna Greenberg is chair of a committee working on this. They have completed a list of funding sources which is posted on the AWAEM web site and periodically updated. Click here! (Located at the top right corner of homepage.)
Increased social networking, such as facebook and twitter.
AWAEM currently has an e-newsletter (you’re reading it!) produced bimonthly. We are currently working on creating an active facebook page with twitter feeds and other social networking. If you’d like to be part of this new and exciting project, contact Stacey Poznanski, stacey.poznanski@gmail.com.
Posting of FAQs and answers on the AWAEM website
AWAEM has articles of interest to women in academics, including short articles, written by women in academic emergency medicine, dealing with many of the topics of interest to women attending the networking lunch. We are working to streamline this information on our website and via social networking.
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” ! !
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- Dolly Parton
Other ongoing pursuits include: A presentation to female students about EM and Academic EM through involvement with EM interest groups to encourage women to consider academics. Defining a Junior and Senior member in each SAEM Region to serve as an AWAEM Representative and Advisor, promoting involvement and collaboration on a regional and local level. Compiling a list of medical schools with programs supporting women faculty Improved communication with our members
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AWAEM AWARENESS March-April, 2011
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AWAEM Member Highlight Julie Welch, MD I began advocating for women in medicine after starting a women’s mentoring group for the EM faculty, residents, alumni, and students in 2004. What began as an informal chat at a neighborhood coffee house grew quickly into regularly scheduled meetings focused on building mentoring relationships and addressing issues affecting women in medicine. Our EM Women’s Mentoring Program continues to thrive and we have shared our program as poster presentations at AAMC 2010 National Meeting in Washington DC, CORD 2011 Annual Meeting in San Diego, and EC Moore Symposium 2011 at Indiana University/Purdue University (IUPUI) in Indianapolis. To find out more about us, check out our website: http://go.iu.edu/pp Over the past few years serving on the Women's Advisory Council for Indiana University School of Medicine has afforded more opportunities to advocate for issues unique to female faculty. I have learned so much working with the experienced, passionate women on this council. Participating in the Subcommittee on Work Life Policies led to two successes over the past year: First, I am lead author on a paper entitled "Flexibility in Faculty Work-life Policies at Medical Schools in the Big Ten Conference." It has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Women's Health (AWMA journal) in May of 2011. Second, from this research we proved that the voices of a few can lead to change at an institution. During 2010, I was instrumental in achieving a paid family leave benefit for Indiana University Health Physicians, a large physician practice group employing over 800 physicians. This paid leave benefits both men and women, as is a salary continuation for 8 weeks of maternity leave, paternity leave, adoption leave, or any other FMLA approved leave. This all came about through perseverance and the formation of a task-force after our physician practice management group announced the removal of our paid maternity/family leave benefit. I was 36 weeks pregnant at the time! After months of meetings, presenting hard facts, and open discussion, the taskforce proposed a new paid family leave policy, which turned out better than we had before. Despite being a part-time faculty member, my work in women’s mentoring and work-life policies was recognized with the award “Outstanding Women Leader, part time” by IUPUI, an institution that includes the undergraduate as well as several graduate schools including medical school, dental school, and law school. I practice clinical emergency medicine as an academic teaching faculty at Indiana University Health - Methodist Hospital Emergency Medicine and Trauma Center, a level one trauma center caring for over 97k patients in downtown Indianapolis, and a training site for residents and medical students from Indiana University School of Medicine. In addition to clinical teaching and general EM lectures, my lecturing focus includes Neuro Emergencies, Dysbarism: High Altitude and Diving Medicine, and Travel Medicine.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine Indiana University School of Medicine Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital jlwelch@iupui.edu
As much as I love my work, there is nothing more important to me than my family. Work life integration takes on a unique meaning in our household, as my husband is also an EM physician and an Assistant Residency Director for the Emergency Medicine Residency at Indiana University School of Medicine. We have 2 happy, active, red-headed sons – Benjamin is 3 years old, and Henry is 17 months old. We thoughtfully make out our work-family calendar months in advance to ensure protected family time. I have found that cutting back to part time clinically affords me the luxury of being an involved mommy and wife. I count on my mother to help watch the boys when I work, and am ever grateful for her flexibility. As I write this, I realize how many aspects of my life are “important.” Being the big sister to two awesome younger sisters has brought such depth to my life. One is a teacher, the other a lawyer, and both are mothers of three kids each. It has been an exciting year helping them launch a small business, Lilli Pearl Hair Accessories, a custom order boutique with the motto, “The Girlier, the Better!” To the Ladies of AWAEM: Thank you for all that you do. I remember my first meeting at SAEM when I was truly inspired to go back to my institution and make a difference. I am surrounded by awesome women here who are as passionate as I am about improving the culture of academic medicine.
“My work life integration… I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a niece, a musician, an athlete, a Christian, and a physician.” Julie Welch, MD
AWAEM AWARENESS March-April, 2011
An Update from the RAC At the Western Regional SAEM Meeting Keystone, CO, Feb 25-26th, 2011 By Kerry Broderick, MD
As a representative of AWAEM’s Regional Advisory Committee (RAC), Sue Watts and I were present at the Western Regional SAEM Meeting held in Keystone, CO. With our wonderful AWAEM poster on display across from the registration desk and plenty of brochures to distribute, visitors had the opportunity to learn who we are, peruse and ask questions. We had an informal meeting on February 25th at 7pm. In line with our goal of regional networking, the meeting brought together women in academics, from medical students to chairs of a department, to be able to see old friends, make new connections, and to discuss the AWAEM mission, current activities and the benefits of joining. Sue Watts gave a very nice
“I've learned that everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.” -Unknown
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presentation, and there was great discussion amongst participants. It was a small but intimate meeting, and I believe there were valuable networking connections made. While our numbers at these meetings tend to be small, we will gain momentum as these events become more routine and promoted. We enjoy this important work and look forward to making more and more connections with such wonderful Women Academicians. For more information on the RAC, how to locate your Regional Advisor, or become involved, contact Linda Druelinger, MD (ldruelin@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu).
AWAEM AWARENESS March-April, 2011
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News You Can Use By NOAM COHEN January 30, 2011 Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List In 10 short years, Wikipedia has accomplished some remarkable goals. More than 3.5 million articles in English? Done. More than 250 languages? Sure. But another number has proved to be an intractable obstacle for the online encyclopedia: surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women. About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University. Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women. Her effort is not diversity for diversity’s sake, she says. “This is about wanting to ensure that the encyclopedia is as good as it could be,” Ms. Gardner said in an interview on Thursday. “The difference between Wikipedia and other editorially created products is that Wikipedians are not professionals, they are only asked to bring what they know.” With so many subjects represented — most everything has an article on Wikipedia — the gender disparity often shows up in terms of emphasis. A topic generally restricted to teenage girls, like friendship bracelets, can seem short at four paragraphs when compared with lengthy articles on something boys might favor, like, toy soldiers or baseball cards, whose voluminous entry includes a detailed chronological history of the subject. Even the most famous fashion designers — Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo — get but a handful of paragraphs. And consider the disparity between two popular series on HBO: The entry on “Sex and the City” includes only a brief summary of every episode, sometimes two or three sentences; the one on “The Sopranos” includes lengthy, detailed articles on each episode. Is a category with five Mexican feminist writers impressive, or embarrassing when compared with the 45 articles on characters in “The Simpsons”? The notion that a collaborative, written project open to all is so skewed to men may be surprising. After all, there is no male-dominated executive team favoring men over women, as there can be in the corporate world; Wikipedia is not a software project, but more a writing experiment — an “exquisite corpse,” or game where each player adds to a larger work. “News You Can Use” features interesting and useful articles or books recommended by one of our members. This issue’s selection was provided by Stacey Poznanski, DO. This is an exerpt. For the remainder of the article, click here.
“Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table. If they are not at the table, we don’t benefit from their crumb.” -Sue Gardner, Executive Direcotr of Wikimedia Foundation
But because of its early contributors Wikipedia shares many characteristics with the hard-driving hacker crowd, says Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. This includes an ideology that resists any efforts to impose rules or even goals like diversity, as well as a culture that may discourage women... Ms. Gardner, citing an example that resonates with her personally, pointed to the Wikipedia entry for one of her favorite authors, Pat Barker, which was a mere three paragraphs when she came across it. Ms. Barker is an acclaimed writer of psychologically nuanced novels, many set during World War I. She is 67 and lives in England. By contrast, Niko Bellic had an article about five times as long as Ms. Barker’s at the time. It’s a question of demographics: Mr. Bellic is a character in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV; he is 30 and a former soldier. The public is increasingly going to Wikipedia as a research source: According to a recent Pew survey, the percentage of all American adults who use the site to look for information increased to 42 percent in May 2010, from 25 percent in February 2007. This translates to 53 percent of adults who regularly use the Internet. Jane Margolis, co-author of a book on sexism in computer science, “Unlocking the Clubhouse,” argues that Wikipedia is experiencing the same problems of the offline world, where women are less willing to assert their opinions in public...According to the OpEd Project, an organization based in New York that monitors the gender breakdown of contributors to “public thought-leadership forums,” a participation rate of roughly 85-to-15 percent, men to women, is common — whether members of Congress, or writers on The New York Times and Washington Post Op-Ed pages. It would seem to be an irony that Wikipedia, where the amateur contributor is celebrated, is experiencing the same problem as forums that require expertise. But Catherine Orenstein, the founder and director of the OpEd Project, said many women lacked the confidence to put forth their views. “When you are a minority voice, you begin to doubt your own competencies,” she said. She said her group had persuaded women to express themselves by urging them to shift the focus “away from oneself — ‘do I know enough, am I bragging?’ — and turn the focus outward, thinking about the value of your knowledge.”
AWAEM AWARENESS March-April, 2011
Available Committees... time to get involved! By Gloria Kuhn, DO, PhD
If you are interested in helping with any of these initiatives please e-mail the chair so you can be included. If you do not hear from the chair within a week please contact me as sometimes messages do get lost in the cyberspace of e-mail land. gkuhn@med.wayne.edu We need people like you to keep AWAEM a success!! AWAEM Research Committee Marna Greenberg: mrgdo@ptd.net
Committee for Medical School Liaison Preeti Jose-Bilowich preetijois@ufl.edu Creation of database of med schools with programs supporting women faculty Keme Carter kemecarter@yahoo.com Book Club Kathryn Dong kathryni@ualberta.ca E-Newsletter Alice Mitchell Alice.Mitchell@carolinashealthcare.org
AAMC/SAEM Data Collection Kerry Broderick Kerry.Broderick@dhha.org
CORD/AWAEM video concept Stephanie Abbuhl Stephane.Abbuhl@uphs.upenn.edu
Didactic Proposal for SAEM National Meeting Sarah Stahmer sarah.stahmer@duke.edu
Annual AWAEM Luncheon Gloria Kuhn gkuhn@med.wayne.edu
Regional Advisory Committee Linda Druelinger ldruelin@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu
Bio & AWAEM Committee Interest Forms Tracy Sanson Oaks61596@aol.com
Creation and maintenance of database of women interested in leadership positions Tracy Sanson Oaks61596@aol.com
AWAEM Awards Committee Esther Choo esther_choo@brown.edu
“I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.” Mae West
Many Photos found via Google Images. For a list of Photo Credits, please contact Stacey Poznanski, DO at stacey.poznanski@gmail.com
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