What good is knowledge if it isn’t put to use?

That was the question underlying the opening comments Monday at a conference on women’s health research. Some 250 doctors, scientists and advocates are gathering at Women & Infants Hospital this week to help set the nation’s research agenda in women’s health for the next decade.

And the speakers at the opening of the three-day conference made clear that they planned to push for studies that reach beyond the laboratory and even beyond the hospital bedside –– to make a difference in people’s lives.

Dr. David R. Gifford, the state health director, called on the group to think about how research “is actually used in the day-to-day practice” of medicine. “While we’re learning about science in medical school,” he said, “we’re not learning how to counsel patients.”

Dr. Maureen Phipps, the director of research at Women & Infants, displayed a chart showing the increase in cases of chlamydia over the past several years. This sexually transmitted disease has “devastating consequences for women’s health,” Phipps said. “The biology of chlamydia is pretty well worked out,” she said. But that knowledge has done nothing to slow the spread of the disease.

Phipps gave another example in an interview: “We know that smoking during pregnancy can lead to poor health outcomes. That’s not a mystery. We have done good research on that. What we haven’t done a great job with is actually figuring out, how do we change women’s behavior? ... It’s not necessarily a drug that we’re missing. It might be an intervention to help improve health through behavioral change.”

Phipps also said that scientists need to do a better job of disseminating accurate information about their findings so that science can influence public policy.

With that, Phipps brought the issue full circle. The Office of Research on Women’s Health, part of the National Institutes of Health, was founded in 1990 as a public-policy decision –– when the Congressional Women’s Caucus, concerned that medical research neglected women, put forth legislation creating the office.

At that time, most research enrolled only men, even to study diseases that affect both sexes. Since then, much has been learned about the biological differences between men and women, as well as treatments for illnesses that afflict only women.

Now, says Dr. Vivian W. Pinn, director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health, it’s time to move forward. To seek input on the direction of future research in women’s health, Pinn has held similar conferences at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and at the University of California-San Francisco, and plans a fourth at Northwestern University in Chicago.

On Monday, she challenged the Providence conference, co-sponsored by Women & Infants Hospital and Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, to come up with something new. “I don’t want to know what everybody knows,” she said. “I want you to think about what we can be doing that is innovative and strategic.”

Dr. Joanna M. Cain, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Women & Infants and assistant dean for women’s health at Brown, said that the Providence conference differed from the others in its focus on woman’s health needs throughout life, rather than specific illnesses, and on how health at one stage of life affects another. Indeed, a woman’s health even before she becomes pregnant can, decades later, affect her daughter’s health in old age.

Pinn said that the conferences in St. Louis and San Francisco had focused on discrete scientific areas. The Providence group, she said, was taking a broader, more integrated look at the issues. She said she was pleased that Governor Carcieri and Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts both spoke at the event, and that state Treasurer Frank T. Caprio (a likely candidate for governor) and several legislators attended.

ffreyer@projo.com