ORWH is sponsoring a new open-access supplement in Social Science & Medicine on “Gender, power, and health: Modifiable factors and opportunities for intervention” that will expand on conversations from the “2022 Gender and Health: Impacts of Structural Sexism, Gender Norms, Relational Power Dynamics, and Gender Inequities Scientific Workshop.”
ORWH Associate Director for Interdisciplinary Research, Elizabeth Barr, Ph.D., along with Derek Griffith, Ph.D. (Georgetown University) and Anita Raj, Ph.D., M.S. (Tulane University), provided scientific leadership for the supplement, which outlines a multidisciplinary understanding of the complex issues inherent in researching gender, power, and health. The supplement brings together established and emerging leaders from the fields of epidemiology, gender studies, men’s health, graphic medicine, demography, clinical medicine, social work, and sociology. The diverse perspectives included in this supplement underscore the methodological, conceptual, and practical challenges and opportunities for advancing a research agenda that acknowledges the multiple pathways through which gender influences health.
The supplement covers a variety of topics, including but not limited to, the health consequences of structural sexism, gender health equity, structural gendered racism, and maternal cardiovascular morbidities. It underscores NIH’s commitment to rigorous and interdisciplinary research on gender and health, including as articulated in objective 1.5 of the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Research on the Health of Women 2024-2028, develop and support research to investigate the multiple domains of gender (e.g., identity, roles and norms, relations, power) and their influence on health. Contributing authors include Nancy Krieger, Ph.D.; Patricia Homan, Ph.D., M.A.; Derek Griffith, Ph.D.; Morgan Philbin, Ph.D., M.H.S.; Sarah Temkin, M.D., and Anita Raj, Ph.D., M.S.