tailieunhanh - Gender as a Health Determinant and Implications for Health Education

The current stabilization in the nursing workforce is a temporary development and should not be used as justification to curtail public funding for nursing education. Given the aging of the baby boomers and the expected retirement of a large segment of the nurse population, steps must be taken now to ensure that world supply of nurses is strengthened before a crisis emerges. Maintaining a viable nursing workforce will not be possible without consistent and continuing financial support for educational programs that prepare professional nurses. . | Perspective Gender as a Health Determinant and Implications for Health Education Karina W. Davidson PhD Kimberlee J. Trudeau PhD Erica van Roosmalen PhD Miriam Stewart PhD Susan Kirkland PhD Gender is a health determinant but gender itself is influenced in part by biological and psychological variables. Understanding gender s influence on health therefore requires an understanding of the determinants of the construct gender. A review of certain gender determinants is presented. The authors consider the modifiability of these determinants and present recommendations about which of these determinants should be targeted for health promotion and policy creation activities. In concluding they argue that gender is a multidetermined construct that encompasses many factors that may be modifiable through intervention and consideration of all of these factors should be vigorously pursued. Keywords gender theory determinants policy review Gender is a multifaceted construct. It is composed of social roles behaviors values attitudes and social environmental factors as well as biological physical and hormonal attributes yet the terms gender and sex are often used interchangeably as though psychosocial and biological attributes inevitably covary. This conflation of terms has led to debates among scientists about how to operationalize these constructs Deaux Karina W. Davidson College of Physicians Surgeons Columbia University New York. Kimberlee J. Trudeau Mount Sinai School of Medicine New York. Erica van Roosmalen Independent scholar consultant Ontario Canada. Miriam Stewart Institute of Gender and Health University of Albert Canada. Susan Kirkland Department of Community Health and Epidemiology Dalhousie University Halifax Canada. Address correspondence to Karina W. Davidson 622 W. 168th Street PH9 Center Rm. 948 Behavioral Cardiovascular Health Hypertension Program Columbia University College of Physicians Surgeons New York New York 10032. This work was supported by NIH .