Towards a Center for Gender and Sex in Health (CGSH)
Brendan Harley (ChBE)
Kathryn Clancy (Anthropology)
Amy Wagoner Johnson (MechSE)
Research Problem
Scholars with great commitments to inclusive research can cause harm when they are unable to operationalize the categories they seek to compare – for instance in conflating sex and gender, or race and ancestry. Health engineering research is impoverished when it does not use the expertise of the life and social sciences and humanities communities in how it considers gender/sex, the increasingly common term to recognize the entanglements of both concepts[1]. Sex differences research is growing across multiple engineering subdisciplines. Yet, these efforts often binarize, rather than operationalize sex. Sustained innovation requires understanding the complexity of the human lived experience through better operationalizing heterogeneity and variation in biological processes, not canalizing them into categories that are not biologically meaningful.
CGSH Vision
Our vision is to foster a new generation of scientific inquiries via an initiative, and eventually a center, equipped to address questions related to patient heterogeneity, gender/sex, and social determinants of health. The consideration of gender and sex in health provides a framework to advance novel research and training initiatives. We will support multidisciplinary research efforts that address important, understudied areas of research related to sex and gender (overlapping but not fully concordant with the concept of “women’s health”). We will develop unique training initiatives to develop scholars who can blend technology with social science and clinical perspectives.
Larger Impact
Technological innovations and rapidly changing social contexts mean that health engineering research and education must include symbiotic relationships with the humanities and social sciences. The CGSH will significantly enhance our capability to accelerate research on the unique health needs of women, intersex people, and gender minorities across their lifespans. Research and training initiatives that incorporate women’s lived experiences, identities, and other social determinants of health will lead to significant advancements and drive the organization of innovative student training initiatives. 1. A Fausto-Sterling. Gender/Sex, Sexual Orientation, and Identity Are in the Body: How Did They Get There? J Sex Res, 56(4-5):529-55, 2019.