Sex and gender matter in health research: addressing health inequities in health research reporting

International Journal for Equity in Health

Commentary

Kimberly Gray¹  Ardath Whynacht²  Jacqueline Gahagan³ 

[1] Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;Department of Sociology, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, Canada;Gender & Health Promotion Studies Unit (GAHPS Unit), Head, Health Promotion Division, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada;

关键词: Sex and gender;    Health equity;    Methodology;    Knowledge dissemination;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12939-015-0144-4

 received in 2014-08-29, accepted in 2015-01-20,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Attention to the concepts of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is increasingly being recognized as contributing to better science through an augmented understanding of how these factors impact on health inequities and related health outcomes. However, the ongoing lack of conceptual clarity in how sex and gender constructs are used in both the design and reporting of health research studies remains problematic. Conceptual clarity among members of the health research community is central to ensuring the appropriate use of these concepts in a manner that can advance our understanding of the sex- and gender-based health implications of our research findings. During the past twenty-five years much progress has been made in reducing both sex and gender disparities in clinical research and, to a significant albeit lesser extent, in basic science research. Why, then, does there remain a lack of uptake of sex- and gender-specific reporting of health research findings in many health research journals? This question, we argue, has significant health equity implications across all pillars of health research, from biomedical and clinical research, through to health systems and population health.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Gahagan et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.