"Policies on sex education need to pay attention to the social context in which they will be implemented," she said. "This example shows that there is a multiplicity of categories out of which health outcomes are produced [including sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality and HIV/AIDS status]. You can’t be effective in public health work unless you can recognize these categories of difference."

The students are members of the first cohort admitted to HSPH able to indicate on their admission forms their interest in participating in the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Women, Gender, and Health (WGH). The inter-departmental program aims to hone students’ critical thinking on how gender, biology and gender inequality impact the health of women and men in the U.S. and abroad.

The concentration requires five credits of WGH core courses and five credits in related courses. In addition, students are asked to coordinate monthly "brown bag lunch" seminars. Graduates who complete the concentration receive a letter from the WGH steering committee, currently comprised of faculty and students from several departments.

Roseman teaches the new introductory core course, "Women, Gender, and Health: Introductory Perspectives," (WGH 211) which includes guest lectures from faculty in WGH who represent the four departments involved in the concentration (the Departments of Society, Human Development, and Health; Environmental Health; Population and International Health; and Epidemiology).

Roseman has served as a professor of gender studies at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and subsequently addressed reproductive rights issues in Eastern and Central Europe as a staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York.

Today, she is senior research officer for the International Health and Human Rights Program of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at HSPH. Much of her research centers on sexual and reproductive health policy and laws related to international human rights norms and standards.

Based on these experiences, Roseman is convinced that attention to gender improves the efficacy of health care policy and access to health care services and information.

"The Programme of Action, agreed to at the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, recognized how central a gendered perspective on health policy would be towards improving the lives of millions of women, men and children," she maintained in a follow-up interview. "Nearly 10 years later, there are many demonstrable, positive results, such as reduced levels of infant and child mortality and increased life expectancy in many low- and middle-income countries."

Six years in the making, the WGH concentration grew out of a joint effort led by faculty and students. To develop the concentration, the course "Women, Gender, and Health" (WGH 200) was first offered in 1998 and was jointly taught by Nancy Krieger, associate professor of society, human development, and health in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, and Sofia Gruskin, associate professor of health and human rights in the Department of Population and International Health.

"Women, Gender, and Health" and "Women, Gender, and Health: Introductory Perspectives," are two of the four core courses in the concentration. The other two are "Women, Gender and Health–Critical Issues in Mental Health," (WGH 210) taught by Barbara Gottlieb, assistant professor in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, and the seminar "Advanced Topics in Women, Gender, and Health," (WGH 207), co-taught by WGH faculty.

Krieger said, "What’s important about this concentration is to educate people so that gender inequality will not be an obstacle in the way of people having good health."

Gruskin stressed that the WGH concentration is the only one of its kind addressing issues of gender and health across a wide variety of public health concerns and with attention to the impact on both women and men. "We’re drawing students from a range of different departments who are interested in understanding how to apply dimensions of gender to the work they do," she said.

A case in point is Ida Hatoum, a first-year student in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health who previously majored in psychology at Boston University and who worked on teen pregnancy prevention for AmeriCorps. "It’s the only program I found that mixes health with gender studies and explores how men and women’s experiences translate into health outcomes," she said.

Hatoum believes that enhanced awareness of gender and other "categories of interest" could yield more targeted solutions to certain public health problems. "Just as advertisers use demographics to reach out to customers," she said, "public health programs or research projects can use this perspective to reach the maximum number of people and have the greatest impact on them."

For Roseman, the course she teaches and the concentration as a whole is a way to mainstream gender-awareness into public health research and practice. "I would like to see more students motivated to take on gender issues in their own work and more faculty to become aware of how the focus of their work could be expanded by an increased gender awareness," she said.

More information can be found at www.hsph.harvard.edu/wgh.