Women are woefully under-researched—the Message project aims to redress the balance

Abstract

Medical research has traditionally studied men, with findings extrapolated to women. Project founder Kate Womersley talks to Menaka Fry about her attempts to change this When Susan Cole was pregnant with her third child her HIV viral load started to rise, even though she was continuing to take her antiretroviral treatment. “Initially I was told I probably wasn’t taking my treatment properly, but that wasn’t the case: there just wasn’t enough research about drug levels during pregnancy,” she says. Cole, a health equity writer and advocate, shared her experiences at a webinar organised by the Message project (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity).1 The project aims to improve the integration of sex and gender considerations across data collection, analysis, and reporting in the UK’s biomedical, health, and care research. Cole’s lived experiences clearly highlight the problem that Message is trying to tackle. She says that a lack of research involving women affects their experiences of illness and treatment, as well as their outcomes. When it comes to guidance and policies on sex and gender equity in research, the UK lags behind the US, Canada, and some European countries.2 The Message project,3 funded by the Wellcome Trust, aims to redress this systemic imbalance. The project was cofounded in 2022 by Kate Womersley, a psychiatry trainee, and Robyn Norton, founding director of the George Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London. The project is now …