The "Situation Analysis on Gender Disparities in Jamaica"(UNICEF 2007) notes that girl children under five are more likely to be brought to private physicians, whereas boy children are more likely to be brought to government hospitals. The UNICEF report attributes a difference of 3-4% in child mortality by gender to this difference in care. ( Read more... )

Fisher et al (2008) compared cotinine (a metabolite of nicotine) levels to self-reported smoking status to see which demographic groups were most likely to lie about their smoking status (EurekAlert synopsis). Fisher found that gender effects varied by ethnic group: White men were more likely to deny smoking than White women, but in Black and ( Read more... )

Laaksonen et al (2008) studied City of Helsinki employees over a period of 3-5 years to examine differences in illness-related absenteeism. For medical leave over 60 days, there was no gender difference, but women were 46% more likely to take "self-certified" sick leave and 34% more likely to take medically certified sick leave. Laaksonen told ( Read more... )

Women are the primary users of health information in general, and this seems to be true online as well. Baker et al (2003) found that male odds of using the internet for health information were about half of female odds (Inconsistent with Pew/Internet, 2005). Pennbridge et al (1999) found that about 60% of health site users were women, in the ( Read more... )

A Pew/Internet survey (2005) estimated that 10% of online adults looked for health information each day. 75% of men use the internet to get health and medical information (compared to 85% of women in this survey). This number is surprisingly high, given a number of studies that indicate that men rely heavily on their doctors and wives for ( Read more... )

Carolina Petrini of comScore surveys told CNN Money (2008) that "traditionally, women have relied on friends, family or a significant other for health-related information, including sexual health and contraception." Results released this month indicate that women are using the internet (60%) more than their friends (51%) to collect information ( Read more... )

Megan Rauscher (2007), reporting for Reuters, discusses new findings by Yale medical student Peter Fabricant that indicate that women have poorer short-term recovery from "keyhole" knee surgery (arthroscopic partial meniscectomy). Age and body mass index (BMI) were not shown to have any effect on short-term recovery, but gender and arthritis did ( Read more... )

Miranda Hitti's (2007) article on WebMD discusses recent research that suggests that women 45-54 are more than twice as likely to have a stroke as men of similar age. UCLA researcher Amytis Towfighi's results in Neurology's June 20th edition (Towfighi et al, 2007) assessed stroke risk in over 17,000 Americans, using data from the National Health ( Read more... )

Clark and Squires (2005) review the issues surrounding treating HIV in women, especially among pregnant women. Rebecca Clark has written several articles calling for further research on HIV infected women, but the majority of the research continues to be on men ( Read more... )

LaForest et al (2005) found that lower income, living in the country, and being female were all factors contributing to reduced quality of life during pollen season for people with seasonal allergies. Wieringa et al (1999) reported that as young children (ages 6-7) boys were more likely to be diagnosed with hay fever, but by the teen years (13-14 ( Read more... )