Breaking Barriers for Gender and Health Equity Through Research

Primarily a pre-clinical medical and pharmacy educationist and researcher. Prof Uma has been involved in health promotion research and education with marginalised populations for over 10 years.  She strongly advocates that community engagement practices in undergraduate teaching prepares global citizens and provides real-world learning experiences. She has designed, spearheaded, and led three such programs; Community Based Practice at School of Medicine, Community Engagement Elective at School of Pharmacy and recently the Campus Community Program. Throughout this program she ahs introduced several innovative practices: themed symposium; skills workshop with sessions on EI, working with disability, mental health first aid and a privilege walk activity; reflective writing in experiential learning.

An accomplishment she had made while leading this program was securing several external community grants to help fund the workshops and research into this area. Her recent research interest is in the healthcare access of the Deaf where I co-founded the HEARD (HEAlth needs of the Deaf) program at Monash. Here she worked with the Deaf community and industry in a collaborative research to develop the DITE app(Deaf in Touch everywhere) which connects the Deaf to medical practitioners through secure  video-based interpreters. She is a 2023 Nature award recipient for the Inclusive Health Research.  

Naoki Kondo, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor and Head of the Department of Social Epidemiology and Global Health in the Graduate School of Medicine and School of Public Health, Kyoto University. His primary research themes are social determinants of health. He is the vice chief investigator of the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study a cohort study following up more than 100,000 older adults nationwide in Japan. His recent study focuses on how to address health inequality in the community settings, conducting intervention studies with local and central government Dr Kondo is a member of the Clinical Consortium for Health Ageing at the World Health Organization.

He holds multiple roles as committee members and advisor for the maternal and child health in the context of the HIV epidemic. He has lead multiple clinical, behavioral and health systems studies investigating the health of women and families in South Africa over the life course, depending understandings of the multilevel determinants of outcomes dividing the burden of disease (including tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections), mental health and obesity metabolic disorders. At UCT he teaches epidemiologic methods as well as infectious and non-communicable diseases epidemiology.

Dr. Unaka is a Professor in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Oregon in 2003 and graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 2007. She completed pediatric residency and chief residency at CCHMC.

In addition to her clinical role as a pediatric hospitalist, Dr. Unaka served as the Associate Program Director (APD) of the Pediatric Residency Program from 2011 – January 2022.

Dr. Unaka spends time working on institution-level community health initiatives which reflects her passion for diversity, inclusion, and health equity. She co-leads Cincinnati Children’s Health Equity Network’s (HEN) which support the equity-oriented improvement work of clinical teams across the institution. Dr. Unaka is also the medical director of quality improvement for the Office of Population Health, which includes the institution’s accountable care organization,  HealthVine HealthVine assumes accountability for the delivery of care management and utilization management functions for approximately 100,000 Medicaid-covered youth who reside in eight counties of Southwest Ohio.

Professor Hannah Kuper is the co-director of the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and co-founder of the Missing Billion Initiative. She is an epidemiologist by training, and her main focus is on health and healthcare access of people with disabilities in low and middle-income countries. She is an NIHR Global Research Professor.

Davide Cirillo is the head of the Machine Learning for Biomedical Research Unit at the Life Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). He received the MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from University of Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Italy, and the PhD degree in Biomedicine from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) of Barcelona, Spain. His research focuses on computational methods for precision medicine with a special emphasis on machine learning, network science, and ethics of artificial intelligence. He is a member of the ELIXIR Machine Learning Focus Group, co-leads the research subgroup of BSC Bioinfo4Women initiative, and is a scientific advisor to the Swiss non-profit Women's Brain Project. He is co-editor of the book “Sex and Gender Bias in Technology and Artificial Intelligence: Biomedicine and Healthcare Applications” (Elsevier Academic Press, 2022).

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University, and Founding Director of Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment. Schiebinger is a leading international expert on gender in science and technology and has addressed the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Korean National Assembly, and numerous funding agencies on that topic. Schiebinger received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

She is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship. She holds Honorary Doctorates from the Universitat de València, Spain, 2018; Lunds Universitet, Sweden, 2017; and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, 2013. Among her publications, see AI can be Sexist and Racist—It’s Time to Make it Fair Nature (2018); Sex and Gender Analysis Improves Science and Engineering Nature (2019); Ensuring that Biomedical AI Benefits Diverse Populations EBioMedicine (2021); Gender-Related Variables for Health Research Biology of Sex (2021); Gendered Innovations 2: How Inclusive Analysis Contributes to Research and Innovation European Commission (2020); A Framework for Sex, Gender, and Diversity Analysis in Research: Funding Agencies Have Ample Room to Improve Their Policies Science (2022).

Sabine Oertelt-Prigione MD, PhD, MScPH is a physician, researcher and organizational consultant. She is the Chair of gender in primary and transmural care at Radboud University in the Netherlands and Professor of sex- and gender-sensitive medicine at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. Her main research focus is the implementation of sex- and gender-sensitive research and practice in biomedicine.

Dr. Mayer is a physician who trained in the Harvard programs in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital and in Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. As the founding Medical Research Director of Fenway Health, he created a community health research program that has developed an international reputation for its capability to conduct community-based research, focusing on sexual and gender minority health and biobehavioral approaches to HIV and STI prevention. He is currently a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Professor in Global Health and Population at the Harvard TC Chan School of Public Health, and is an Attending Physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Starting in 1994, he has been a site Principal Investigator of NIH-funded clinical trials units, focusing on bio-behavioral HIV prevention research (HIVNET, HVTN, MTN, ATN), and is a member of the scientific leadership of HPTN. He has co-authored more than 1000 peer-reviewed publications, co-authored the first text on AIDS for the general public and has co-edited 5 academic texts. He has served on the governing boards of amfAR, HIVMA and IAS, is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the International AIDS Society, and is a member of the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board.

Alex Keuroghlian, MD, MPH (any pronouns) is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School (HMS); Director, Division of Education and Training at The Fenway Institute; and Director and Michele and Howard J Kessler Chair, Division of Public and Community Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). They are principal investigator of the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at The Fenway Institute, a HRSA BPHC-funded cooperative agreement to improve care for LGBTQIA+ people across the U.S., as well as the HRSA HAB-funded 2iS Coordinating Center for Technical Assistance, which implements interventions nationally for people with HIV. Dr. Keuroghlian established the MGH Psychiatry Gender Identity Program and is clerkship director for two senior electives in sexual and gender minority health at HMS. He also co-directs the HMS Sexual and Gender Minority Health Equity Initiative, which leads longitudinal medical curriculum and faculty development in LGBTQIA+ health.  

Dr. Carl Streed, Jr. is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Section of General Internal Medicine at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine and the Research Lead for the GenderCare Center at Boston Medical Center. As the Research Lead for the GenderCare Center at Boston Medical Center he collaborates with researchers, clinicians, and communities to assess and address the health and well-being of transgender and gender diverse individuals. To achieve equity in healthcare access, health, and community well-being, Dr. Streed actively incorporates the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility into his work as a clinician-investigator. As such, his personal and professional pursuit for a more equitable and inclusive society is focused on elevating voices often ignored and redistributing power. His clinical, training, advocacy, and research initiatives regarding the health and well-being of marginalized persons, particularly sexual and gender minority populations (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ] persons), have been used to influence and inform institutional, state, and federal policy as well as clinical care, academic research, and scholarship.

Nationally, Dr. Streed has chaired the American Medical Association Advisory Committee on LGBTQ Issues, served on the board of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality, is on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Medical Student Pride Alliance, and currently serves as the President of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health. Dr. Streed’s efforts to improve the health and well-being of sexual and gender minority persons and communities have earned him several awards, notably from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University Alumni Associations, the American Medical Association Foundation (twice), the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, as well as recognition from the Obama White House.

Professor Mark Tomlinson is the Co-Director of the Institute for Life Course Health Research Stellenbosch University.  He is also Professor of Maternal and Child Health in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queens University, Belfast, UK.  His scholarly work is primarily interested in how to improve early childhood development, child and adolescent mental health, maternal mental health, and developing life course approaches to improving health. He was elected as a member of the Academy of Science in South Africa in 2017.  He has published over 370 papers in peer-reviewed journals, edited four books and published numerous chapters

Dr Lynn Hendricks is a lecturer at the Division of Health Systems and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University (SU) and holds a joint PhD in Social Science and Public Health. She has expertise in methods innovation, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge translation, and leads the Social and Environmental Determinants of Health transdisciplinary interest group at SU. She is the founding director of the research consultancy Research Ambition and founding co-director of the NPO Hearts in Action.

She is a fellow of Gilead Public Health as well as a fellow of Microsoft Society & AI. She is a board member of the Centre for HIV/AIDS Management at SU. A long-standing previous executive member of the Psychological Society of South Africa, she now serves as a divisional executive for the Division of Climate and Environmental Psychology.

She has a keen interest in creative and co-productive research in communities and works with digital mediums as well as primary arts-based methods. Her work includes co-producing a local and international public art exhibition with the Iziko South African Museum and a community-led documentary about young Cape Flats-based women who contracted HIV perinatally. She has received the Springer Nature Inclusive Health Research Award and the Cochrane Thomas C Chalmers Award in recognition of her work. 

Svitlana (Sveta) Moroz is a woman living with HIV and women’s rights defender from Ukraine. Svitlana is a lead author of community-led research exploring gender inequality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender-based violence, human rights, mental health, HIV criminalisation. Svitlana mobilized resources, built women’s capacities, and co-authored various shadow reports on the situation of women who use drugs, women living with HIV, sex workers, and LBT women submitted to the UN Committee CEDAW. Together with her community colleagues from Eurasian Women’s Network on AIDS (EWNA) she advocates for adequate gender equality standards and commitments in HIV response in the EECA region. Under Svitlana’s leadership, in 2022-2023, EWNA carried out Women-led Gender Assessment: How countries address barriers to HIV services for women living with HIV, sex workers and women who use drugs, focusing on 15 countries of the SEECA countries.