The CfG in review
The Centre for Gender Medicine (CfG) will continue to work relentlessly towards the implementation of the gender dimension in education, research and the society at large. Our best Christmas present was a letter from the EU Commissioner for Health & Food safety who supports the vision of our centre and counts on continued collaboration.
Our working platform is interdisciplinary and based on 4 pillars: 1. Infrastructure/resources 2. Integration 3. Innovation 4. Impact.
This strategic framework guided our activities during 2015. We educated researchers, doctoral and psychology students, informed and influenced decision makers, organised forward thinking events, invited international thought-leaders and started new collaborations opening up new avenues for gender research implementation. We are also excited to finally launch a beta version of the website Gendered Innovations.se! Read more below about our key activities during the past year.
To achieve optimal effects despite limited financial and human resources, the Centre for Gender Medicine is dependent on collaborations. Read more and contact us for suggestions on how a beneficial cooperation might look like for both parties. We are looking forward to a challenging 2016, please follow our website for updates and future communication.
Education
Implementation of the gender dimension in the medical curricula
CfGM have been holding lectures for second and third semester medical students on sex and gender analysis in health care. The CfGM took this opportunity to implement an innovative pedagogical approach based on collaborative lectures — with special guests like the president for the European Medical Students' Association (EMSA), Kristina Mickeviciute, interactive seminars and use of social media tools. I addition we also educated psychology students, as part of their course in Developmental Psychology and recently terminated our 7.5 hp online elective course Health and Disease from a Gender Perspective.
At the beginning of last year, CfGM and Centre for Global Health supported the interdisciplinary Gender, Health and Rights seminar series, based on the Stanford MOOC International Women's Health and Human Rights organized by Giulia Gaudenzi and Karin Båge
Lärardagen
We made a contribution to the annual Lärardagen (in the good company of Hans Rosling) where we presented the above mentioned Gender, Health and Rights seminar series as a successful approach to internationalization of education. We showed why this innovative blended learning model based on a MOOC could be the future for Global Education in Gender Medicine.
Sharing our expertise at The International Meeting for Gender Medicine
The Centre attended the International Meeting for Gender Medicine in Berlin, the most important forum to discuss the future trends of Gender and Innovative research. Karin Schenck-Gustafsson, Karolina Kublickiene, Stefan Arver and Mia von Euler were invited speakers together with junior representatives like Samsul Arefin, Giulia Gaudenzi and Karin Båge. Also Monika Misiowiec and Erika Tanos from our CfGM team, shared their expertise of gender implementation in research and education at KI.
Innovations
Gendered Innovations.se is a new website that harness the creative power of sex and gender analysis for new discoveries and innovations. Our aim is to provide a go-to source with useful content in the form of Swedish expertise, experience, tools, videos and case studies. It is still in beta version but now we are welcoming visitors and are happy to receive feedback to make sure that the content is as relevant as possible! Users can browse through the different sections of the webpage and find out the methodologies that should be adopted to analyse whether certain R&D has the potential to expand towards a diversification by sex and gender. Our Centre has created this platform, in collaboration with Stanford University, to introduce the concept of gender diversity to the Swedish audience; to industries as well as to doctors and scientists. The Swedish Expertise & Experience section is under development and new content is being published gradually. Stay tuned our friends!
Gendered Reactions continues to provide information to the public about drug side-effects that are gender differentiated. The website - which we are developing further, advanced by becoming even more user friendly and achieved further collaboration with FDA representatives.
Research & Expert meetings
Follow the research of our recent grantees at 2014 Grants:
Camilla Hage, Registered Nurse, PhD.
Project: Biomarkers of altered metabolism in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Publications
Alexey Shemyakin, MD, Postdoc
Project: Red blood cell arginase activity in patients with acute coronary syndrome: a gender perspective. Publications
Linda Mellbin, MD, PhD, FESC
Project: Testosterone in patients with glucose abnormalities and acute myocardial infarction and in matched controls. Publications
Sarah Costantino, Associated
Project: Epigenetic signatures as a predictor of vascular risk in men and women with prediabetes. Publications
Representatives from CfGM shared their experience at Expert Workshops @EUGenMed and several papers are in the pipeline:
Article in the European Heart Journal
Sex and gender in clinical medicine and clinical pharmacology
Sex, gender and risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) across Europe
Sex differences in basic biomedical research and preclinical drug development
Sex and Gender in Medicines Regulation and Medical Education
Translating sex & gender research into regulatory practice: more targeted, effective opportunities for prevention, treatment and care!
IMPROvED - fighting Pre-eclampsia, the leading cause of maternal death in Europe
Karolinska Institutet and the KI Centre for Gender Medicine were hosting an international expert meeting on the pregnancy disorder pre-eclampsia in May. Over two days, top-class obstetric clinicians, midwives, scientists and industry partners from 8 European countries were meeting to discuss exciting progress in the large European funded study IMPROvED. The recent consortium publications pays attention to early pregnancy biomarkers. Read more...
Inspirational mini-symposiums
Two thought-leaders from Linköping University were invited by us in December to share their experiences of how to put gender on the agenda within the field of medicine. Gillian Einstein held a lecture titled: Multidisciplinary research into the effects of oophorectomy on cognition and well-being: A Linköping University Project in Gender Medicine. Nina Lykke presented her current research: Cancer Cultures, gender and intersectionality
In September, CfGM invited a very special VIP guest, Florence Haseltine – the founder of Society for Women’s Health Research to give a lecture. A prominent fighter and tireless promoter for the advancement of women, she showed up in her Google Glass andsparked engagement with remarkable facts and aha-moments.
We also held a mini symposium on New Insights on Developmental Programming where we invited Peter William Nathanielsz, distinguished Professor of Life Course Health, University of Wyoming and Olaf Bergmann, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology.
New collaborations & internationalization
2015, we joined the European Gender Medicine Network and most of its initiatives and workshops to design recommendations, guidelines and teaching materials for the implementation of Sex & Gender research for the medical sector.
A MOU was signed with Lodz University in Poland who uses our web-based education for their students and overall this collaboration strengthens our internationalization process.
Karolina Kublickiene presented the center at the European Gender Summit and strengthened the collaboration towards implementation of the gender dimension in academia for the benefits of gender equal and gender sensitive research and innovation together with the Swedish secretariat for Gender Research, Forte and other Nordic partners. We look forward to collaboration within the framework of gender equality.
The center was also participating as an invited partner at Sex and Gender-Based Medical Education Summit to develop a Roadmap for Curricular Innovation organized by Mayo clinic in USA. Karolina Kublickiene shared her experience about the facilitation and barriers in the implementation of gender dimension in medical curriculum at Karolinska Institutet. Although separated by distance and culture, several common challenges and successes have emerged in efforts for further collaboration to embed sex and gender into medical education worldwide. The start of the KI and Mayo collaboration resulted in short review paper for Promoting sex and gender to optimize clinical research and healthcare delivery.
We also participated in the EnGendering exellence meeting organized by Norvegian research council to further strengthen collaborations for including gender dimension in research and innovation.
The KI Centre for Gender Medicine looked at a new partnership with the Clinical Innovation Fellowships (CTMH), a collaboration centre that asks excellent professionals to look at medical needs and solve hospital problems.
Visibility & awareness raising
The Millennials - two future thinking events held at KI
Two significant sister-events in November zoomed in on young adults' health, wellbeing, conditions in society and as patients. Furthermore it became clear that diversity continues to play an important role. The Centre for Gender Medicine’s partner, TedX Stockholm organized the opening event - Generation Y - at the Aula Media. Millennials (also called Generation Y) are facing challenges and contradictions unknown to previous generations.
Following on, a day-long symposium - The Millennial Body & Mind - was hosted by the CfGM (with the help of Herr Omar agency) at the Nobel Forum. This event, focusing on our future patients, featured an array of international speakers invited to present key trends related to youth and healthcare, practices and research from diverse disciplines. A cross-cutting topic was how sex and gender perspective continues to be relevant to the future health and treatment of the Millennials.
TEDx Stockholm and CfGM celebrate Differentia
On February 16th the Centre for Gender Medicine endorsed the biggest TEDx conference ever hosted in Sweden. With the theme #Differentia, the inspirational conference focused on “the concept of diversity”. How embracing our society’s differences could lead to new and creative solutions to old problems?
Symposiums
The KI Centre for Gender Medicine (CfGM) hosted the 4th symposium about Sex and Gender aspects on drugs, with a special focus on arrhythmias in collaboration with the Stockholm County Council and the Food and Drug Agency, USA.
Other activities
Following a US initiative, Sweden dedicated March to fight against sex and gender bias in medical practice and research. To raise money for research and engage the public on the problem of sex bias in the medical practice, the NGO 1.6 million club - together with partners - organised the Woman in Red campaign, a month of activities dedicated to women health.