Educating the primary care physician on the differences between men and women that influence the approach to the same pathology will favor early diagnosis, appropriate treatment and correct follow-up for women.
Due to sex and gender differences, women’s health is different from that of men, which means that their characteristics need to be addressed from a specific perspective.
From here it is born ‘HERA: one woman, many women’a collaboration between the Spanish Society of Primary Care Doctors (SEMERGEN) i Organonthe aim of which is to raise awareness and train family doctors about the importance of a longitudinal approach to women’s integral health in order to improve their quality of life.
In this way, the primary care doctor will be trained in the differences between men and women that influence the approach to the same pathology, which will favor a early diagnosisone appropriate treatment and one correct tracking for them
Women’s health from another perspective
When a woman is ill, a man does it differently, with different intensity, symptomatology and prognosis.
According to SEMERGEN, biological differences can make women not respond in the same way as they do to the same treatment or a certain dose, which is why it is important to include this perspective for the care of their health and the management of their pathologies
Moreover, biological differences aside, it is also about the way women evolve in their way of understanding life and assuming traditional roles.
“Although we are increasingly sensitized, we are meeting in our Primary Care consultations with many women who pose a new challenge as a result of changes in the socio-cultural context: change in roles, change in the management of their sexuality and new family models, and all this influences their health”, she explains doctor Lourdes Martínez-Berganza, second vice-president of SEMERGEN.
Improve women’s health
With a view to improving the quality of life and health of women, the doctor Milagros González Béjar, coordinator of the HERA Projectensures that the family doctor needs a revision in his training that allows him to answer his doubts, as well as to be sensitized to the importance of making a personalized medicine that includes the perspective of sex and gender.
For the medical director of Organon, Begoña Gómez-Taboadathe most important thing is to treat and understand the different pathologies taking into account the data from studies with appropriate designs, that is to say, that allow identifying relevant differences between men and women to be able to handle these pathologies in a personalized and specific way.
‘HERA: one woman, many women’
Thus, the HERA program seeks to promote a sex/gender-differentiated approach to clinical practice based on scientific evidence and to be able to improve the comprehensive health of women.
This will be longitudinal, focusing on the different health needs of women in four stages of their lives: adolescence, youth, maturity i old age.
The training will last three years (online and accredited) and will include the review of already known pathologies based on the new scientific evidence from this sex and gender approach.
As well as new content focused on topics such as the prevention of cardiovascular risk factors, contraception, anxiety, depression and suicide, the role of women as carers, chronic non-oncological pain, sexual health, menopause, new technologies in old age, among others.