Drexel University College of Medicine's Women's Health Education Program (WHEP), part of the Department of Medicine, is one of six original National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health. WHEP is committed to advocating for women's health issues in medicine. Our efforts are directed toward long- and short-term change, with the hope that the future physicians we train will view women's health as a fundamental element of medical care that is more than reproductive health.

Meet WHEP Scholars Allison Gutierrez and Amanda Reich

Amanda Reich

"I spent the summer between my first and second year of medical school as an advanced ninth grade math teacher, teaching Algebra II and Pre-Calculus. The class was made up of three boys and one girl. The class was fun, but I wondered why it was made up of more boys than girls. This is also something I thought about a lot while I was growing up. Being a woman who always loved math and science, I was usually the minority in the room in terms of gender. I researched this and found that there's something called "mathematics anxiety." There are strong psychological and social aspects to this, as well as a biological basis for it. Female stereotypes are reinforced from a young age, causing women to shy away from the fields of science and math, even though they're just as capable and just as intelligent, based on having the same GPAs and same grades in school. I wondered a lot about that discrepancy, so I spent a lot of time doing a literature review about that topic and wrote a paper about it." Learn more about Amanda.

 
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