Marianne J. Legato, MD, FACP is an internationally known academic physician, author, lecturer and specialist in women's health. She is professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and the founder and director of the Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia University. She is a practicing internist in New York City.
Legato founded the Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia University in 1997. It is the first collaboration between academic medicine and the private sector focused solely on gender-specific medicine: the science of how normal human biology differs between men and women and of how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender.
Legato has spent her research career doing cardiovascular research on the structure and function of the cardiac cell. Her work was supported by the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health. She won the J. Murray Steele Award, the Martha Lyon Slater Fellowship and a four year Senior Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, New York Affiliate. She won a coveted Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health and sat on the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute's study section on cardiovascular disease, as well as, on the Basic Science Council of the American Heart Association. She has served as a charter member of the Advisory Board of the Office of Research on Women's Health of the National Institutes of Health. She was co-chair of a task force that authored the 1999-2000 report from that office, An Agenda For Research On Women's Health For The 21st Century. In addition, she has received many awards for her leadership role in women's health.
She is the author of Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget; The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Heart Disease;What Women Need to Know; and Eve's Rib. 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. Her film, Shattering the Myths: Women and Heart Disease won first prize in the category of Women's Health at the 1995 International Health and Medical Film Festival.
Legato is the founder and editor of The Journal of Gender Specific Medicine published for the scientific community. She is also founder and editor of Gender and Health, published for the lay public. She is on the editorial board of Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Prevention Magazine. She writes continuously for both the scientific and lay communities, and is a consultant in health for the Ladies Home Journal and MORE Magazine. She is a consultant for several multinational corporations and provides expertise in the area of women's health.
Legato has been featured on the ABC program 20/20 and has made multiple appearances on local and national television and radio programs, including Good Morning America, Good Day New York, The Today Show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and Lifetime TV. She has been an invited speaker at numerous lectures and conferences throughout the United States.