Non-Reproductive-Endocrine Women’s Health Content Across Three Osteopathic Schools

Women's health topics beyond reproductive and endocrine systems - such as sex-specific disease patterns, immunologic differences, and non-reproductive oncology - are essential for training physicians to address the full spectrum of women's health needs. To evaluate how three osteopathic programs incorporate this broader women's health content, we analyzed preclinical women's health materials from Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine (Burrell), Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine (ARCOM), and William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine (WCUCOM). Burrell follows a systems-based spiral curriculum with daily synchronous and asynchronous instruction; ARCOM delivers an integrated organ-system helix curriculum; and WCUCOM utilizes a one-pass curriculum in which the first year focuses on foundational anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry without an organ-system framework, and the second year highlights pathological conditions and pharmacological interventions in a block-based structure. For this study, women's health topics outside of reproductive-endocrine systems included embryology, autoimmune and rheumatologic disorders, immune and hematologic differences, cardiovascular sex differences, pain and inflammatory pathways, psychiatric and mood-disorder differences, non-reproductive cancers, genetics, general pharmacology, metabolic or systemic illnesses with female predominance, and non-specific female references such as epidemiologic risk differences. ARCOM included 51 of 183 entries (28%) in these domains, Burrell had 31 of 171 (18%), and WCUCOM had 27 of 49 (55%). Though WCUCOM had the fewest overall women's health topics, it had the highest proportion devoted to broader women's health domains outside of the reproductive and endocrine systems. These findings highlight meaningful variation in how schools integrate women's health content beyond reproductive-endocrine systems, reflecting differences in curricular emphasis and structural design. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.