Marianne Legato
Encyclopedia
Marianne J. Legato, MD, FACP, is an internationally known academic physician, author, and lecturer and globally recognized expert in gender-specific medicine, the science of how normal human function and the experience of the same disease vary as a function of gender/biological sex. Legato is an expert on the sex-specific aspects of men's and women's health
and is the founder and director of the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University
. In 2008, she established the non-profit Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine. She has devoted much of her research to the subject of women and heart disease
and in 1992 won the American Heart Association's Blakeslee Award for writing the best book on cardiovascular disease written for the lay public.
Legato is the founder and editor of The Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine and of Gender-Medicine and a leading advocate for the inclusion of women in clinical trial
s. She is annually cited in New York Magazine's top doctors issues. She is also the author of bestselling Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan, Eve's Rib:The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine and How It Can Save Your Life, The Female Heart, and Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget, which was translated into eleven languages. She edited the medical textbook, Principles of Gender Specific Medicine, the first compilation for professional audiences of the sex-specific aspects of normal human function and disease.
Legato has been an invited speaker at lectures and conferences throughout the United States and around the world. She has been featured on the national ABC program 20/20
in a segment dealing with gender prejudice in women's health care and has made multiple appearances on local and national television and radio programs, including NBC's Good Morning America
, Good Day New York
, the Joan Hamburg Show, The Today Show
, Lifetime TV, Iyanla Show, The Larry King Show and the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Marianne Legato has been an invited speaker at hundreds of lectures and conferences throughout the world for over a decade. Most recently, she was the president of the First International Congress on Gender-Specific Medicine in Berlin
, Germany (February, 2006) and is the honorary president of the next two International Congresses on Gender-Specific Medicine in Vienna
(2007) and Stockholm
(2008).
, on house calls and hospital rounds, and knew by the age of three that she wanted to follow him into a career in medicine. Although he had high expectations for his daughter, her father was anxious to protect her and opposed her decision to go to medical school. She enrolled at his alma mater, New York University College of Medicine, but could not persuade him to allow her to have her independence and a career in medicine.
Legato began her career without the support of her family. She credits her success in medical school and after graduation to the mentorship of José Ferrer and M. Irené Ferrer, whom she met at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. M. Irené Ferrer even visited the dean of New York University College of Medicine to arrange for Legato to complete her education there, personally paying her tuition fees. Legato has two children, Christiana and Justin, who have grown up as part of Ferrer's extended family and knew her as "gran".
in cardiology
at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and in 1968 she was appointed instructor in medicine, beginning an academic career at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, where she currently holds the position of Professor of Clinical Medicine. She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians
and a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine
.
Since 1969, Legato has been an attending physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center
, and since 1973 at the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York. She is currently senior attending physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt and has been a senior attending physician at the Presbyterian Hospital since 1998. She has held several teaching appointments and committee memberships at both institutions, and in 1997 founded the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
As director of the Partnership, Legato promoted collaboration between academic medicine and the private sector to generate research on the differences between men and women. Her mission is to ensure the inclusion of women in clinical trials of relevance to the health of both sexes, to promote the study of differences in the biology
of men and women and how gender affects the diagnosis
and treatment of disease
, for the benefit of all patients. The Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine is raising funds for the M. Irené Ferrer Professorship in Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University.
and by research grants from the National Heart and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. She has served on study sections to review applications for NIH grants at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. She was a charter member of the advisory board (1995–1998) to the newly created Office of Research in Women's Health of the NIH. There she was co-chair of the Task Force convened to set the research agenda on women's health for the 21st century.
In 1992, Legato won the American Heart Association's Blakeslee Award for the best book written for the lay public on cardiovascular disease
with her publication of THE FEMALE HEART: The Truth About Women and Heart Disease, published by Simon and Schuster. Her film, "Shattering the Myths: Women and Heart Disease” won a “Freddy”, a first prize in the category of Women's Health at The 1995 International Health and Medical Film Festival.
She was named an "American Health Hero" by American Health for Women in 1997 and received the Women's Medical Society of New York's annual Woman in Science Award in 1997. In the Fall of 2000, Ladies Home Journal honored Legato as a “Heroine of Women’s Health”. She has been consecutively cited as one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine, for the past 12 years, most recently in 2009.
In 2002 she received the Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women's Association
. She has been listed in the June, 1994 issue of Mirabella magazine's "1,000 Women for the Nineties", and inclusion in the New York Times list of twelve health care professionals accomplished in the area of women's health in June, 1997.
She was one of 300 American physicians included in the National Library of Medicine's documentary, Changing the Face of Medicine in 2004. In 2005, she received the National Council on Women’s Health Award for distinguished service in gender-specific medicine. In 2006, the Ladies' Home Journal established an annual Marianne J. Legato Award in Gender-Specific Medicine in her honor.
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...
and is the founder and director of the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. In 2008, she established the non-profit Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine. She has devoted much of her research to the subject of women and heart disease
Heart disease
Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
and in 1992 won the American Heart Association's Blakeslee Award for writing the best book on cardiovascular disease written for the lay public.
Legato is the founder and editor of The Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine and of Gender-Medicine and a leading advocate for the inclusion of women in clinical trial
Clinical trial
Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...
s. She is annually cited in New York Magazine's top doctors issues. She is also the author of bestselling Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan, Eve's Rib:The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine and How It Can Save Your Life, The Female Heart, and Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget, which was translated into eleven languages. She edited the medical textbook, Principles of Gender Specific Medicine, the first compilation for professional audiences of the sex-specific aspects of normal human function and disease.
Legato has been an invited speaker at lectures and conferences throughout the United States and around the world. She has been featured on the national ABC program 20/20
20/20
20/20 is an American "television newsmagazine", , broadcast on ABC since June 6, 1978. Created by ABC News executive Roone Arledge, the show was designed similarly to CBS's 60 Minutes but focuses more on human interest stories than international and political subjects...
in a segment dealing with gender prejudice in women's health care and has made multiple appearances on local and national television and radio programs, including NBC's Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
, Good Day New York
Good Day New York
Good Day New York is a weekday morning news and entertainment feature show which airs on WNYW, the New York City flagship television station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company...
, the Joan Hamburg Show, The Today Show
The Today Show
Today is an iconic American morning news and talk show airing every morning on NBC. Debuting on January 14, 1952, it was the first of its genre on American television and in the world. The show is also the fourth-longest running American television series...
, Lifetime TV, Iyanla Show, The Larry King Show and the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Marianne Legato has been an invited speaker at hundreds of lectures and conferences throughout the world for over a decade. Most recently, she was the president of the First International Congress on Gender-Specific Medicine in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany (February, 2006) and is the honorary president of the next two International Congresses on Gender-Specific Medicine in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
(2007) and Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
(2008).
Childhood and Early Career
Marianne J. Legato was born in 1935, in New York. She grew up accompanying her father, a general practitionerGeneral practitioner
A general practitioner is a medical practitioner who treats acute and chronic illnesses and provides preventive care and health education for all ages and both sexes. They have particular skills in treating people with multiple health issues and comorbidities...
, on house calls and hospital rounds, and knew by the age of three that she wanted to follow him into a career in medicine. Although he had high expectations for his daughter, her father was anxious to protect her and opposed her decision to go to medical school. She enrolled at his alma mater, New York University College of Medicine, but could not persuade him to allow her to have her independence and a career in medicine.
Legato began her career without the support of her family. She credits her success in medical school and after graduation to the mentorship of José Ferrer and M. Irené Ferrer, whom she met at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. M. Irené Ferrer even visited the dean of New York University College of Medicine to arrange for Legato to complete her education there, personally paying her tuition fees. Legato has two children, Christiana and Justin, who have grown up as part of Ferrer's extended family and knew her as "gran".
Professional career
After graduating from medical school in 1962, Legato completed an internship and junior residency at Bellevue Hospital and a senior residency at the Presbyterian Hospital of the City of New York. From 1965 to 1968 she was a visiting fellowVisiting fellow
A visiting fellow is an academic, often a senior academic, who is undertaking research at a different institution than his or her main institution for a limited period of time, often but not necessarily at a foreign institution. A visiting fellow can be paid or unpaid; sometimes the salary is paid...
in cardiology
Cardiology
Cardiology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the heart . The field includes diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart disease and electrophysiology...
at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and in 1968 she was appointed instructor in medicine, beginning an academic career at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, where she currently holds the position of Professor of Clinical Medicine. She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians
American College of Physicians
The American College of Physicians is a national organization of doctors of internal medicine —physicians who specialize in the prevention, detection, and treatment of illnesses in adults. With 130,000 members, ACP is the largest medical-specialty organization and second-largest physician group in...
and a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine
American Board of Internal Medicine
The American Board of Internal Medicine is a non-profit, independent physician evaluation organization committed to continuously improving the profession for the public good by certifying physicians who practice internal medicine and its sub-specialties...
.
Since 1969, Legato has been an attending physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center
St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center
St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, an academic affiliate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, is a 1,076-bed, full-service community and tertiary care hospital serving New York City’s Midtown West, Upper West Side and parts of Harlem....
, and since 1973 at the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York. She is currently senior attending physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt and has been a senior attending physician at the Presbyterian Hospital since 1998. She has held several teaching appointments and committee memberships at both institutions, and in 1997 founded the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
As director of the Partnership, Legato promoted collaboration between academic medicine and the private sector to generate research on the differences between men and women. Her mission is to ensure the inclusion of women in clinical trials of relevance to the health of both sexes, to promote the study of differences in the biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
of men and women and how gender affects the diagnosis
Diagnosis
Diagnosis is the identification of the nature and cause of anything. Diagnosis is used in many different disciplines with variations in the use of logics, analytics, and experience to determine the cause and effect relationships...
and treatment of disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
, for the benefit of all patients. The Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine is raising funds for the M. Irené Ferrer Professorship in Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University.
Recognition
Legato has allegedly won extensive professional recognition for her work, including the Martha Lyon Slater Fellowship from 1965 to 1968 and in 1971, the J. Murray Steele Award, both from the New York Heart Association. Her research career, which defined the structure and function of the myocardial cell, was supported by a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of HealthNational Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
and by research grants from the National Heart and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. She has served on study sections to review applications for NIH grants at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. She was a charter member of the advisory board (1995–1998) to the newly created Office of Research in Women's Health of the NIH. There she was co-chair of the Task Force convened to set the research agenda on women's health for the 21st century.
In 1992, Legato won the American Heart Association's Blakeslee Award for the best book written for the lay public on cardiovascular disease
Cardiovascular disease
Heart disease or cardiovascular disease are the class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels . While the term technically refers to any disease that affects the cardiovascular system , it is usually used to refer to those related to atherosclerosis...
with her publication of THE FEMALE HEART: The Truth About Women and Heart Disease, published by Simon and Schuster. Her film, "Shattering the Myths: Women and Heart Disease” won a “Freddy”, a first prize in the category of Women's Health at The 1995 International Health and Medical Film Festival.
She was named an "American Health Hero" by American Health for Women in 1997 and received the Women's Medical Society of New York's annual Woman in Science Award in 1997. In the Fall of 2000, Ladies Home Journal honored Legato as a “Heroine of Women’s Health”. She has been consecutively cited as one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine, for the past 12 years, most recently in 2009.
In 2002 she received the Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women's Association
American Medical Women's Association
The American Medical Women's Association is a professional advocacy and educational organization of women physicians and medical students. Founded in 1915 by Bertha VanHoosen, the AMWA works to advance women in medicine and to serve as a voice for women's health...
. She has been listed in the June, 1994 issue of Mirabella magazine's "1,000 Women for the Nineties", and inclusion in the New York Times list of twelve health care professionals accomplished in the area of women's health in June, 1997.
She was one of 300 American physicians included in the National Library of Medicine's documentary, Changing the Face of Medicine in 2004. In 2005, she received the National Council on Women’s Health Award for distinguished service in gender-specific medicine. In 2006, the Ladies' Home Journal established an annual Marianne J. Legato Award in Gender-Specific Medicine in her honor.