AMWA is pleased to announce that Linda Brodsky, MD and Roberta Gebhard, DO, co-chairs of AMWA’s Gender Equity Task Force, are recipients of a 2012 Joan F. Giambalvo Scholarship research grant. The grant is awarded by the AMA Foundation and the AMA Women Physicians Congress. Drs. Brodsky and Gebhard will use the grant to plan a study to investigate the work habits of women physicians. AMWA has also provided financial support for the planning phase of the study.

“Unprecedented numbers of women are entering medicine. Workforce planning is based largely on research done on baby boomer men; the same assumptions cannot apply to women and their male millennial generation peers,” said Dr. Brodsky. “Research to date suggests substantive differences in the way women physicians work and behave.”

This proposed project will create the data base and study design for a larger proposal which will seek to collect in depth information about how both women and men of generations X and Y work and think in the first third of their career, when both career and family milestones compete for their energies.

"Women form one-third of the physician workforce and almost half of matriculants into medical school," stated Claudia Reardon, MD, Chair of the AMA Women Physicians Congress. "If we are going to meet the needs of an increasing patient population, we need to invest in research that improves our knowledge of the challenges and opportunities for women in medicine."

The Giambalvo research scholarships are awarded to advance the progress of women in the medical profession and strengthen the ability to identify and address the needs of women physicians and medical students through the study of professional issues of women in medicine.

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