Call for Symposium Proposals
2nd Joint Meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences and the International Society for Gender Medicine
Sex and gender research: Impact throughout the lifespan
May 5-8, 2019
Washington Marriott Georgetown
Washington, DC, USA
The 2019 OSSD/IGM Meeting Program Committee invites proposals for Scientific Symposia.
We welcome proposals in all areas of sex and gender differences research, spanning the gamut from fundamental biology (including evolution, genetics, molecular/cellular biology, and physiology) to translational science and clinical research. Symposia should highlight an area of current research on sex and gender differences, rather than being focused on issues related only to one sex. Proposed symposia should attempt to include basic and clinical science (i.e., from bench to bedside)
We particularly encourage proposals involving speakers and topics new to the OSSD and IGM, including proposals focusing on fast-moving, timely areas, and proposals bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives on a common theme.
Symposia should be chaired by an OSSD or IGM member or co-chaired by two members. Proposals from new and prospective members are encouraged, so membership of the chair(s) is not required at the time of proposal submission. However, non-member chairs should be prepared to join the OSSD before the meeting. Each symposium should have three to four speakers (slots 20-30 mins each) related by a coherent theme, with topics accessible to a range of OSSD and IGM members. Speakers will typically be faculty members (or the equivalent), though up to one speaker in each panel may be a postdoctoral fellow. The symposium chair(s) may, at their discretion, be included in the speaker line-up. Confirmation of participation from each speaker is helpful but not essential for proposal submission. When appropriate, the Program Committee may work with the chairs to combine symposia or suggest additional/alternative speakers. Please note that OSSD and IGM are not able to cover costs for speaker travel or housing. However, a $150 honorarium plus one night hotel accommodations will be provided for non-member speakers.
We also invite individual proposals from faculty/instructor and postdoctoral members of OSSD or IGM for talks in any relevant area. Accepted talks will be grouped into symposia or incorporated into existing symposia as appropriate. Please use the final page of proposal form to submit an individual proposal.
Proposals may be prepared using this form and should be submitted by email to ossd2019program@gmail.com by Sept. 15, 2018. Please address questions to the OSSD/IGM 2019 Program Committee Chair, Karyn Frick, at frickk@uwm.edu.
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Marianne J. Legato, MD, Ph. D. (hon. c.), FACP is an internationally renowned academic, physician, author, lecturer, and pioneer in the field of gender-specific medicine. She is a Professor Emerita of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr. Legato is also the Director of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine, which she founded in 2006 as a continuation of her work with The Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University. She received an honorary PhD from the University of Panama in 2015 for her work on the differences between men and women.
At its core, gender-specific medicine is the science of how normal human biology differs between men and women and how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender. Dr. Legato’s discoveries and those of her colleagues have led to a personalization of medicine that assists doctors worldwide in understanding the difference in normal function of men and women and in their sex-specific experiences of the same diseases.
She began her work in gender-specific medicine by authoring the first book on women and heart disease, The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Coronary Artery Disease, which won the Blakeslee Award of the American Heart Association in 1992. Because of this research, the cardiovascular community began to include women in clinical trials affirming the fact that the risk factors, symptoms, and treatment of the same disease can be significantly different between the sexes. Convinced that the sex-specific differences in coronary artery disease were not unique, Dr. Legato began a wide-ranging survey of all medical specialties and in 2004, published the first textbook on gender-specific medicine, The Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine. The second edition appeared in 2010 and the third edition, dedicated to explaining how gender impacts biomedical investigation in the genomic era, won the PROSE Award in Clinical Medicine from the Association of American Publishers in 2018. A fourth edition is forthcoming.
She also founded the first scientific journals publishing new studies in the field, The Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine, and a newer version, Gender Medicine, both listed in the Index Medicus of the National Library of Medicine. She has founded a third peer-reviewed, open access journal, Gender and the Genome, which focuses on the impact of biological sex on technology and its effects on human life.
Dr. Legato is the author of multiple works, including: What Women Need to Know (Simon & Schuster, 1997), Eve’s Rib (Harmony Books, 2002), Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget (Rodale, 2005), Why Men Die First (Palgrave, 2008), The International Society for Gender Medicine: History and Highlights (Academic Press, 2017), and most recently, The Plasticity of Sex (Academic Press, 2020). Her books have been translated into 28 languages to date.
As an internationally respected authority on gender medicine, Dr. Legato has chaired symposia and made keynote addresses to world congresses in gender-specific medicine in Berlin, Israel, Italy, Japan, Panama, South Korea, Stockholm, and Vienna. In collaboration with the Menarini Foundation, she is co-chairing a symposium on epigenetics, Sex, Gender and Epigenetics: From Molecule to Bedside, to be held in Spring 2021 in Italy. She maintains one of the only gender-specific private practice in New York City, and she has earned recognition as one of the “Top Doctors in New York.”
