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Gender-based bias and conflation of gender and status are root causes of disparities in women’s health care and the slow advancement of women to leadership in academic medicine. More than a quarter of women physicians train in internal medicine (IM) and its subspecialties, and women physicians almost exclusively constitute the women’s health focus within IM. Thus, IM has considerable opportunity to develop women leaders in academic medicine and promote women’s health equity. To probe whether holding an endowed chair—which confers status—in women’s health may be an effective way to advance both women leaders in academic medicine and women’s health, the authors explored the current status of endowed chairs in women’s health in IM. They found that the number of these endowed chairs in North America increased from 7 in 2013 to 19 in 2015, and all were held by women. The perceptions of incumbents and other women’s health leaders supported the premise that an endowed chair in women’s health would increase women’s leadership, the institutional stature of women’s health, and activities in women’s health research, education, and clinical care. Going forward, it will be important to explore why not all recipients perceived that the endowed chair enhanced their own academic leadership, whether providing women’s health leaders with fundraising expertise fosters future success in increasing the number of women’s health endowed chairs, and how the conflation of gender and status play out (e.g., salary differences between endowed chairs) as the number of endowed chairs in women’s health increases.

Introduction: Preschool vision screening rates in primary care are suboptimal and poorly standardized. The purpose of this project was to evaluate pediatric primary care adherence to and improvement in preschool vision screening guidelines through a learning collaborative environment. Methods: Thirty-nine Ohio primary care providers interested in preschool vision screening self-selected to participate in an Institute for Healthcare Improvement Breakthrough Series learning collaborative that spanned 18 months. Charts of patients attending 3-, 4-, and 5-year well-child visits were randomly selected and reviewed for documentation of vision screening attempts, referrals, and need for rescreening. Results: Practitioners improved evidenced-based screening attempts for distance visual acuity and stereopsis of 3–5-year-old patients from 18% at baseline to 87% (P < 0.001) at 6 months; improved screening rates were sustained through completion of the collaborative. Baseline referral rates (26%) of abnormal vision screens improved by 59% (P < 0.001) during the first 6 months and were maintained through month 18. Rates for children with incomplete screens that were scheduled for a repeated screening increased during the first 6 months. However, changes in this metric did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.265), nor did it change during the remainder of the collaborative. Conclusions: Rapid integration and maintenance of preschool vision screening guidelines are feasible across primary care settings utilizing a structured learning collaborative. Challenges with the rescreening processes for children with incomplete vision screens remain, with the 3-year age group having the greatest room for improvement.

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