When Yolanda Mageto, MD, MPH, ATSF, takes the stage at the ATS 2025 International Conference Women’s Forum, she will be speaking as a nationally recognized expert in interstitial lung disease (ILD), a respected mentor, and someone with an urgent message about equity in the field of respiratory health and beyond.

For years, the Women’s Forum has been about elevating women, mentoring women, and developing networks of support among the women of the ATS. And these are still important goals, said Dr. Mageto, medical director of ILD at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

But there is a new urgency.

“Medicine has been under siege for quite some time, but due to recent events, it has been escalated to a new level,” Dr. Mageto said. “The upcoming generation not only will have to deal with some of the things we continue to deal with but also with issues on a different level.”

She listed some of these issues as unforeseeable escalations in social media, tighter health insurance regulations, greater pressures from private equity, emboldened misogyny, and diminished funding sources. 

As a clinician, educator, and researcher involved in multiple idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and ILD trials over the last 20 years, Dr. Mageto remains actively involved in the total care and management of her patients.

She said these interactions continue to be a source of inspiration. As does the support she sees for women throughout the profession and within the ATS membership, groups she says have been “very supportive of women and continue to be so.”

And now is a time for that support to matter.

“We really do need to go into action because people are scared—terrified,” Dr. Mageto said. “This talk isn’t just for women. When it comes to patriarchy and misogyny in medicine, men need to call out other men. If you see a colleague doing it, I expect you to talk to them. There are ways to educate. Be willing to do some internal examination to make sure you’re not part of the problem, but part of the solution.”

These issues, Dr. Mageto noted, have been acute in the United States, but are global concerns—something important to an international organization such as the ATS.

She said advocating for equity must be done within a global framework, and she wants to explore those connections, concerns, and triumphs in her speech.

One of the issues Dr. Mageto wants to approach with the insight of international experience is how women can mentor one another at mid-career and beyond. She said all too often mentoring is seen as something that is done for professionals at the beginning of their career, and never again. Dr. Mageto compared this to being an active and loving parent until a child completes middle school, then abandoning them as they enter high school, a time often considered as being one of life’s greatest challenges.

Similarly, mid-career professionals, particularly women, face some of their greatest opportunities and challenges at this point in their professional lives and can benefit—and benefit their profession and their patients—by having strong counsel.

If nothing else, Dr. Mageto said, now is the time to give extra support to talented mid-career leaders because they will be the ones preserving empathetic values and defining professions beyond the challenges of today.

“What we are dealing with today is just today,” Dr. Mageto said. “What we must think about is what we are going to be dealing with at the end of it all. What’s the aftermath? And who’s going to be there?”

The Women’s Forum is organized and presented by the ATS Membership Committee.

The ATS thanks Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi | Regeneron, and Genentech, Inc. for their generous support of the ATS 2025 Women’s Forum.