Integrating sex and gender in health research and policy

Through this course, participants will learn how sex and gender are defined in the context of health research and policy, how to distinguish between the two concepts, and how these variables influence illness across the life course. Participants will discover how health research has poorly accounted for sex and gender historically, creating a gender data gap with negative consequences for health outcomes.

The course has a practical focus aimed at upskilling participants to understand emerging requirements for sex and gender equity in health research and to meet and promote these requirements in their own work. Training will cover practical steps and considerations needed to account for sex and gender at each stage of the research cycle, including study design, data collection, data analysis and reporting of findings. Participants will also learn how to critically appraise existing research and policy through a sex and gender lens.

For researchers working with human participants and/or data, an optional in-depth practical module (Statistical Methods for Sex- and Gender-Disaggregated Analysis) is available for an additional cost.

This is an online, cohort-based course that will run over six weeks.

The majority of the course will be delivered through pre-recorded lectures and virtual activities which participants progress through at their own pace. This will be complemented by two live online sessions to connect and share learnings with the wider cohort and course leads. Participants will benefit from belonging to a cohort which will discuss course content together virtually over the six weeks, as well as during the live sessions.  

Participants will have access to online course content for up to three months from the course start date.

The course is open to anyone with an interest in sex and gender equity in health and in new policy requirements for accounting for sex and gender.

We welcome participants with diverse professional backgrounds, including but not limited to health researchers, policy professionals, clinicians and healthcare delivery staff, pharmaceutical and industry sector professionals, and other professionals working within the health and research sectors.

The course will be relevant to researchers from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including pre-clinical research, clinical trials, epidemiology, social science and evidence synthesis. Training-focused modules (Module 4 and Optional Module 6) will focus primarily on studies which use human participants and/or data, rather than animals or cells, although pre-clinical case studies will be presented.

This course is open to a global audience.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Recall how sex and gender are defined in a medical context and summarise the distinction between these two concepts, as well as related ideas including intersectionality.
• Understand the role of sex and gender as key modifiers of health and disease, across a range of health conditions and medical specialities.
• Describe the changing influences of sex and gender across the life course, considering periods of particularly important change such as puberty, the perinatal period and menopause.
• Design a research study to account for sex and gender across data collection, analysis and reporting
• Apply a sex and gender lens to medical research across the life course and evaluate how well existing research, policies or clinical guidelines account for sex and gender to inform knowledge about human health.

For participants completing Module 6 on Statistical Methods for Sex- and Gender-Disaggregated Analysis, additional learning outcomes will be:

• Conduct sex- and gender-disaggregated statistical analysis of participant data
• Meta-analyse sex- or gender-specific summary data from published literature

Following completion of the course all participants will be awarded an Imperial College London Certificate of Completion.

Module 1 – Sex and gender: what it’s all about

We begin with an introduction to the concepts of sex, gender and intersectionality in the context of medical research and healthcare.

Module 2 – How do sex and gender impact health? Case studies

This module presents a variety of case studies demonstrating how differences in sex and gender impact illness and treatment across medical specialities. Examples are provided across the healthcare and research sector – covering preclinical research, clinical trials, epidemiology and public health – providing a holistic overview of the importance of taking sex and gender into account.

Module 3 – Impact of sex and gender on lifelong health and disease

Module 3 considers sex and gender throughout the life course, focusing on how sex and gender shape health differently at different stages of life according to hormonal, muscular and other changes in the body.

Module 4 – Designing with sex and gender in mind

In this module, you will learn how to design and deliver research studies that effectively account for sex and gender. Training will focus on accounting for sex and gender during study design, data collection, data analysis and reporting of findings, and will provide you with the skills to meet new sex and gender research policies being adopted by funders.

Module 5 – Enablers of change: a whole sector approach

Actors at each stage of the research pipeline have a responsibility to ensure research accounts for sex and gender to a high standard, from funders and researchers to pharmaceutical companies and publishers. This module provides an overview of how different stakeholders can deliver policy and shift practice to ensure that sex and gender are better accounted for in research.

Module 6 (Optional) – Statistical Methods for Sex- and Gender-Disaggregated Analysis

This optional module is for anyone interested in applying sex- and gender-disaggregated analysis in their own work, or in understanding the methods behind such research. Through guided exercises and interactive activities, you will learn how to perform sex- and gender-disaggregated analysis of individual participant data as well as meta-analysis of summary data.  

This course is presented by the School of Public Health at Imperial College London and the MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project at The George Institute for Global Health. It has been developed in collaboration with the Imperial College Women’s Health Network of Excellence.

The MESSAGE project has pioneered change in the UK on sex and gender consideration in medical research and provides thought leadership and guidance to funders adopting new sex and gender policies.

Course teaching will be delivered by a wide range of subject matter experts working across health research and policy in the UK and worldwide.

Course leads:

Dr Carinna Hockham
Research Fellow, School of Public Health, Imperial College Faculty of Medicine

Dr Kate Womersley
Research Fellow, School of Public Health, Imperial College Faculty of Medicine; Psychiatrist, NHS

Alice Witt
Policy Fellow, The George Institute for Global Health

Presenters:

Dr Sophie Behrman
Honorary Clinical Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford

Dr Alison Berner
Academic Clinical Lecturer in Medical Oncology, Barts Cancer Institute; Speciality Doctor in Adult Gender Identity Medicine, NHS

Dr Adaeze Chikwe
Doctor, NHS; Council for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Medical Women’s Federation

Professor Claire Clarkin
Professor of Skeletal and Developmental Biology, University of Southampton

Dr Laura Downey
Advanced Research Fellow, School of Public Health, Imperial College London; Senior Lecturer, School of Population Health, University of New South Wales; Program Lead for Universal Health Coverage, The George Institute for Global Health

Dr Maria-Teresa Ferretti
Co-founder, Women’s Brain Project; Clinical Operations and Partnerships Manager, Syntropic; Lecturer, CAS Gender Medicine Switzerland; Scientific Advisor, Walking the Talk for Dementia; Researcher, Karolinska Institute; Co-founder, ASSAI

Agnieszka Freda
Executive Publisher, Elsevier

Professor Ophira Ginsburg

Provost's Visiting Professor in Global Cancer Equity, Imperial College London and Consultant, Médecins Sans Frontières

Dr Jessica Gong
Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Epidemiology and Data Science, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCL

Professor Jane Hirst
Chair of Global Women’s Health, Imperial College London; Director of Women’s Health, The George Institute for Global Health; Consultant Obstetrician, NHS

Professor Channa Jayasena

Clinical Professor in Reproductive Endocrinology and Andrology, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London; Consultant in Reproductive Endocrinology, NHS and Head of Andrology, St. Mary's and Hammersmith Hospitals

Miriam Kenrick
Co-founder, Women in Pharma

Professor Severine Lamon
Professor, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences and Deputy Associate Dean of Research, Deakin University

Dr Victoria Male
Associate Professor in Reproductive Immunology, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London

Dr Edward Mullins
Clinical Senior Lecturer, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London and the George Institute for Global Health; Honorary Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, NHS

Dr Devaki Nambiar
Program Director, Healthier Societies Strategy, The George Institute for Global Health; Researcher at Harvard, University of New South Wales and Manipal Academy of Higher Education

Dr Sanne Peters
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College of London and University Medical Centre Utrecht

Dr Cat Pinho-Gomes
Academic Consultant in Public Health Medicine, Institute for Global Health, UCL; Honorary Consultant, Public Health Medicine, UKHSA and the Met office

Dr Anna-Louise Pouncey
NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Vascular Surgery, St George’s, University of London

Sarah Sowerby
Co-founder, Women in Pharma

Dr Paz Tayal
Clinical Associate Professor in Cardiology, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London; Consultant Cardiologist, NHS