Preface

As every person is special requiring the utmost in medical and medication therapy, the primary emphasis of this book is individualizing therapy for girls, women, transwomen, and gender-nonconforming individuals. With terminology constantly evolving, both inclusive and specific gender and culture terms are used interchangeably when appropriate throughout this book. Editors, authors, and reviewers have the best intentions of being respectful and inclusive of all individuals. This book describes the sex gender differences in biology, pathophysiology, assessment, social determinants, pharmacotherapy, and healthcare services that require different assessments, diagnoses, treatments, communications, and health care delivering specific for female patients. Basic, clinical, social, and healthcare service research continues to document how health care needs to integrate a full sex and gender spectrum versus a one-dimensional approach that ignores these two important concepts.

The goals of the third edition of this book are to help health care students, professionals, and educators:

• discover the unique facets of girls’, women’s, transwomen’s, and gender-nonconforming individual’s health care from biological and social determinant perspectives,

• address health care needs across the lifespan including medical, cultural, and social needs in a culturally sensitive, respectful, equitable, and accessible manner, and

• provide rational, evidence-based pharmacotherapeutic interventions based on sex and gender differences.

This comprehensive resource should improve the care provided and also help advance educational and research endeavors in health.

Each chapter has stated learning objectives and is a concise, upto-date review of known science. A patient case is included with each chapter beginning with the pertinent social and medical history of the patient. The reader is encouraged to develop a therapeutic plan and then compare it to the treatment of the patient at the end of the chapter. Section 1 is focused on historical, social, and societal factors that influence health care. Sections 2 to 4 are focused on reproductive health and related conditions across the lifespan. Sections 5 to 6 are focused on sex-gender disease and treatment differences. Section 7 is focused on female cancers. Sections 2 to 7 follow a similar clinical template. The primary emphasis of the clinical chapters is individualizing care including nonpharmacologic and pharmacotherapy options. Current guidelines and medication tables are included when applicable. Therapeutic challenges are embedded in the chapters to provide the reader with an opportunity to expand thinking to complex patients, require additional literature searching, and or generate research ideas for unknown solutions to current health problems. They are intended to inspire critical thinking and further exploration of a topic and are suitable for in-class and group discussions.

New additions were added to the third edition. Diversity, equity, inclusiveness, and access have been added to the culture chapter. As in the second edition, gender identity and sexual orientation are explored in the culture chapter and transperson care in the gender-affirming chapter. Now whenever data exist, differences for lesbian, trans, bisexual, and gender-nonconforming individuals have been included in the other chapters throughout this book. New cases were created for the bioethics case to reflect current health care controversies. Pregnancy termination has been added as a separate chapter. The sex-gender differences in chronic illnesses have been separated into individual or combined focused disease chapters. A new section has been created for neurology and mental wellness. A second case is now included with the self-assessment questions and the number of self-assessment questions and answers increased.

Together the chapters provide the information needed to deliver up-to-date care using a holistic approach to the person and pharmacotherapy while working to decrease stress discrimination and health disparities. Behaviors and therapies for healthy pregnancies will be covered, as well as increasing the health and safety of the pregnant person and fetus for people with many acute and chronic illnesses. Therapies to prevent premature deliveries and improve delivery are discussed. Information is provided to improve infertility and contraception care inclusive of natural family planning to pharmacotherapy with nonhormonal and hormonal options. Using sex-gender differences should improve health care outcomes of a wide array of disease conditions.

We are sincerely grateful for the time and talents contributed by the section editors, chapter authors, and reviewers. They generously shared their knowledge, skills, and experiences to enhance the scope, depth, and accuracy of this resource. We are grateful for Michael Weitz, Global Publisher, McGraw Hill, who advocated for a third edition, thus making this edition a reality. We greatly appreciate the amazing talents of Kim Davis, Developmental Editor, McGraw Hill, to bring all pieces of the book into an educational textbook and help us resolve publishing issues, other McGraw Hill staff who resolved problems such as copyright, a huge task, and Nitesh Sharma and others at KnowledgeWorks Global, Inc., to polish edit and format the chapters to bring the words to effective echapter pages.

Our greatest hope is that you, the reader, will find that this resource helps you grow your knowledge and improve your skills in caring for and treating your patients in a way that considers all the unique, complex, and dynamic aspects of girls, women, and LBTQ+ individuals during their lifetime in a holistic and culturally sensitive approach. We welcome and encourage all feedback that will be used to enhance the fourth edition.