Hospital names new director of women’s health

Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian announced Thursday its appointment of Vivian M. Dickerson as medical director of the hospital’s women’s health programs and care.

“I’m thrilled to be joining Hoag,” she said in a telephone interview. “I think it’s going to be an extremely exciting organization to be part of, and I’m very impressed with the new CEO and his vision, and I’m honored to be a part of it.”

The Orange Hills resident will lead Hoag’s integrative healthcare for women throughout the hospital, especially on the heels of the addition of the Sue and Bill Gross Women’s Pavilion and the recently opened women’s Wellness Center.

“I think the biggest thing that I am going to be doing is to create even more awareness of and draw attention to women’s health and women’s health issues,” she said. “Hoag has all of the tools and all of the capability to be one of the top hospitals in the country, and I think that one of the places we can really excel is women’s health and women’s programs.”

Until recently, she said, women’s health issues went largely unnoticed or under-researched — something she is setting out to change.

“It’s become quite clear that whether we’re dealing with menopause and hormones or whether we’re dealing with cardiovascular disease — women aren’t just little men,” Dickerson said. “We have different bodies, we behave differently, we manifest our symptoms differently, and we respond differently to drugs and treatments.

“Females are 52% of the population, and we just simply have not spent enough time really giving them their due, if you will, in terms of looking at all these issues and how they’re different.”

Dickerson worked as a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the UC Irvine School of Medicine since 1998 and has also taught at UCLA and USC medical schools. She also served two terms as the chair of the California Family Heath Council, and she just finished her third year as the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and hopes that experience will bring some national attention to the hospital.

“I am much more able now to devote myself to program development,” she said. “Being a professor was wonderful — I love teaching medical students. I love teaching residents,” she said. “That part I’m going to miss very, very much, and I think one of the challenges here is to develop some more research capability.”

Dickerson said she plans to create programs for women in perimenopause, the years before menopause begins, and menopause, as that is her area of expertise.

But four days into the job, she’s still in the “information gathering” stage.