Trends in Female Representation on NCCN Guideline Panels

NCCN produces highly influential disease-specific oncology clinical practice guidelines. Because the number of women in academic oncology has increased, we assessed whether the composition of NCCN Guidelines Panels reflected this trend.

Using historical guidelines requested from NCCN, we investigated time trends for female representation on 21 NCCN Guidelines Panels and analyzed the trends for female-predominant cancers (breast, ovarian, uterine, and cervical) compared with all cancers.

From 2013 to 2019, there was an increase from 123 women of 541 total panelists (22.7%) to 175 women of 542 panelists (32.3%). Within the 4 female-predominant cancers, the increase was more rapid: from 30 of 101 total panelists (29.7%) to 66 of 118 panelists (56.4%). Excluding female-predominant cancers, increases were minimal.

There could be multiple explanations for these differing trends, including the possibility of more rapid increases in the underlying pool of female physician-scientists in female-predominant specialties or more efforts to increase the representation of women in decisions about the standard of care in cancers predominantly affecting women.