Gender Differences in Pediatricians? Perspectives Regarding Community Child Health: Results from a National Survey

Cynthia Minkovitz, MD, MPP ¹, Anita Chandra, MPH ¹, Andy Aligne, MD, MPH ², Karen O'Connor ³, Holly Grason, MA ¹ and Tom Tonniges, MD ³. ¹ Population & Family Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, 21205; ² PLC/CARE, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY and ³ American Academy of Pediatrics, Elk Grove Village, IL.

 

Background: Women comprise a growing proportion of the pediatric workforce. Gender differences in perspectives toward community engagement have been noted among trainees, but little is known about community child health perspectives of pediatricians who have completed residency.

 

Objective: To assess whether there are gender differences among pediatricians beyond residency regarding their perspectives about community child health activities.

 

Design/Methods: National, random sample, mailed Periodic Survey of American Academy of Pediatrics US members, 2004; 421 men and 459 women, response rate = 58%. Chi square statistics and ANOVA were used to measure associations of gender with community involvement, perceived responsibility, and strategies used to influence children?s health.

 

Results: Among men and women equally, 45% of pediatricians were involved in community activities to promote children?s health and 76% felt moderately or very (vs. little or not) responsible for improving child health in their communities. More women than men found their current level of involvement to be too little (68.8% vs. 54.8%, p<.01) and expected increasing community work over the next 5 years (65.5% vs. 50.8%, p<.01). Among both men and women, voting in local or state elections was selected as the most often used strategy to influence child health in their local communities (69.5%). Women and men used different additional strategies to influence child health with more women reporting addressing parent, teacher or community groups and more men reporting working as coalition members, educating legislators, communicating with the media, and working with their local AAP chapter (all p<.05).

 

Conclusions: While perceiving equal responsibility for promoting child health and reporting comparable current involvement, women report anticipating greater involvement over the next 5 years. Gender sensitive strategies are needed to enhance pediatricians? skills and promote opportunities for both men and women to engage in community child health activities.