Women comprise more than one third of the active physician workforce, an estimated 46% of all physicians-in-training, and more than half of all medical students in the United States. Although progress has been made toward gender diversity in the physician workforce, disparities in compensation exist and inequities have contributed to a disproportionately low number of female physicians achieving academic advancement and serving in leadership positions. Women in medicine face other challenges, including a lack of mentors, discrimination, gender bias, cultural environment of the workplace, imposter syndrome, and the need for better work-life integration. In this position paper, the American College of Physicians summarizes the unique challenges female physicians face over the course of their careers and provides recommendations to improve gender equity and ensure that the full potential of female physicians is realized.

Unsustainable rising health care costs in the United States have made reducing costs while maintaining high-quality health care a national priority. The overuse of some screening and diagnostic tests is an important component of unnecessary health care costs. More judicious use of such tests will improve quality and reflect responsible awareness of costs. Efforts to control expenditures should focus not only on benefits, harms, and costs but on the value of diagnostic tests-meaning an assessment of whether a test provides health benefits that are worth its costs or harms. To begin to identify ways that practicing clinicians can contribute to the delivery of high-value, cost-conscious health care, the American College of Physicians convened a workgroup of physicians to identify, using a consensus-based process, common clinical situations in which screening and diagnostic tests are used in ways that do not reflect high-value care. The intent of this exercise is to promote thoughtful discussions about these tests and other health care interventions to promote high-value, cost-conscious care.

This article summarizes the ACP/ Annals COVID-19 Vaccine Forum II held on 16 December 2020.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is an uncommonly recognized etiology of soft-tissue infections. Our experience suggests that pneumococci can cause serious infections of soft tissues, especially in patients with connective-tissue diseases. Systemic lupus erythematosus was an underlying condition in three of the six patients described in the present report.