Gender medicine is the rapidly growing field of medicine that aims to provide equitable, safe, and cost-
effective care for both male and female patients. While "sex" is the preferred term in basic science research, in
this application we have used the term "gender" - referring to the socially constructed biological roles of an
individual based on his or her XX or XY status - as it is more commonly used by clinicians. The focus of this
field of medicine is gender-based biological differences in addition to the social mechanisms that influence the
manifestation, diagnosis, and management of disease conditions. Significant gaps in gender-specific treatment
and outcomes are evident in several spheres of emergency care especially neurological emergencies and
resuscitation. These include cardiac arrest, traumatic brain injury and neurological recovery, acute stroke,
seizures, headaches as well as in resource utilization such as diagnostic imaging or device selection.
Emergency departments (ED) form the core recruitment site and laboratory for clinical research trials studying
such time-sensitive conditions. With a 24-hour presence in the ED and with access to patients in these
spheres, emergency physicians play an ideal role in leading gender-specific clinical studies for acute
neurological care and also serve as vital partners for interdisciplinary collaboration. The 2014 Academic
Emergency Medicine (AEM) consensus conference, "Gender Specific Research in Emergency Care -
Investigate, Understand and Translate How Gender Affects Patient Outcomes" will address this void by
assembling clinicians, researchers, policy-makers, and basic and clinical scientists from multiple specialties
to understand and investigate gender-related disparities in clinical outcomes of neurological emergencies.
The conference will focus on high volume and resource-consuming ED visits with a particular focus on
neurological emergencies. Specific aims of the workgroup are to: 1) Summarize and consolidate current data
to improve our understanding of gender-specific research for neurological emergencies and identify critical
gender-related gaps in knowledge in emergency care, 2) Create a research agenda that advances gender-
specific research in the prevention, diagnosis, and management of neurological emergencies, and 3) Build a
multinational interdisciplinary consortium to translate, disseminate and study gender medicine of acute
neurological emergencies. A designated issue of AEM and invited specialty journals will disseminate the
scientific summary, research agenda, and conference proceedings, as well as original research related to
gender issues. The three-year planning phase of this conference will culminate in a one-day conference on
May 13, 2014 in Dallas, Texas. The collaborative network established through this conference will also
create an infrastructure for continued meaningful national collaborations on gender-specific research in
emergency care.