Literature Review on Effective Sex- and Gender-Based Systems/Models of Care

January 30, 2007

METHODS

The literature search was conducted in October and November of 2006. The primary source of materials for the search was 12 wide-ranging academic databases that catalog thousands of academic journals. These journals cover relevant subject matter areas such as women's and gender studies, healthcare, sociology, psychology, and general social and medical sciences. The databases searched were Academic Search Premier; Contemporary Women's Issues; GenderWatch; GLBT Online; HealthSTAR; JSTOR; Nursing & Allied Health Collection; Proquest Research Library; PsycInfo; PubMed; ScienceDirect; and Sociological Abstracts.

In addition to these journal databases, we also searched the following nine individual journal titles, which are not cataloged in any of the previously mentioned databases: AWHONN (Association of Women's Health Obstetrics and Neonatal Nurses) lifelines; BJOG: An international journal of obstetrics and gynecology; Cancer nursing; Critical pathways in cardiology: A journal of evidence-based medicine; Evidence Based Medicine; Evidence Based Mental Health; Evidence Based Nursing; Psychiatric services; and Science. To round out our journal search, we manually searched the following four key journals (in addition to our electronic database search) because of their particular relevance: Women's Health Issues; Journal of Women's Health; Women and Health; and Journal of Men's Health and Gender. In general, each source was searched for the preceding 10-year period (1996-2006), although search dates varied somewhat based on individual title availability.

All searches were conducted electronically using a series of keywords. The primary keywords were terms related to sex or gender (including "sex," "gender," "woman," "women," "girl," "female," "man," "men," "boy," and "male") and words related to health (including "health," "healthcare," "health care," "mental health," "public health," and "dental"). Each identified item included both kinds of keywords in its primary identifiers (including title, subject header, article keywords, and article abstract).

In addition to these primary keywords, relevant materials also included at least one secondary keyword. Secondary keywords included "access to care," "approach," "attract," "barriers," "care outcome," "chronic disease," "clinical care," "continuity of care," "difference," "disasters," "disparity/disparities," "doctor-patient communication," "effective," "efficacy," "engage," "evaluate," "evidence-based," "infrastructure," "lay health workers," "model," patient advocate," "patient navigator," "patient reimbursement," "patient safety," "pharmaceutical coverage," "practices," "process change," "quality improvement," "quality of care," "rapid cycle change," "recruit," "self-management," "structural change," "structure," "systemic," "system," "systems approach," "systems of care," and "trends."

Once articles were electronically retrieved using the primary and secondary keywords, the lead author of this report reviewed thousands of titles and abstracts to identify relevant materials to be included in this search. Articles of interest were retrieved in full-text (where available) for subsequent analysis.

To supplement our journal-based approach, we also used the following techniques to locate relevant materials:

• Conducted a search for relevant books and book chapters using our identified keywords (using the Georgetown library book catalog).
• Thoroughly reviewed the reference section of identified materials to locate additional materials.
• Contacted other Federal agencies and programs to search for unpublished materials on this topic; agencies contacted included the Department of Veterans Affairs and other offices on women's health throughout the Federal Government.
• Contacted key authors to request additional materials.
• Searched the Web sites of relevant nonprofit organizations (e.g., The Commonwealth Fund and the Kaiser Family Foundation) to identify other potentially relevant materials.
• Conducted a Google search to identify other content for this review that might have been missed in our previous searches.

Our initial searching located approximately 400 items for possible inclusion in this review. Identified items were reviewed and summarized by a research assistant and entered into an EndNote library (EndNote is a reference program that stores bibliographic information, abstracts, research notes, and PDF versions of materials). This EndNote library was used to generate bibliographic information in this report, and a complete copy of the final library has been provided to OWH.

Current as of March 2007