About IGH

Please introduce yourself

Angela Kaida: Hi, my name is Angela Kaida. I'm the scientific director for the CIHR Institute of Gender and Health, and I'm also a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.

Can you tell us in 60 seconds what is your vision of the future of gender and health research and why it matters?

Sheila Nyman: Well, for me, the future of gender and health is, what's important about it is, moving towards acknowledging all the diversities within gender. And my vision for the future is to be inclusive of that in whatever health aspect we're looking at. We're also looking at the person, their gender, and their life experience and who they are. It all makes one package.

Angela Kaida and Sheila Nyman: All my relations. Thanks Elder Sheila. My vision is pretty similar. I think the Institute of Gender and Health and the Canadian health research ecosystem has done an amazing job of funding research that looks at the ways in which sex and gender and their entanglement impact our health. And there's so much more that we stand to learn from those initial steps of research, and that includes expanding our considerations of what is sex and what is gender.

Angela Kaida: Moving us beyond the binary to embrace non-binary, continuous understandings of sex and gender and the ways in which these factors influence our health, as well as adding a dimension of intersectionality. How is it that us and the genders that we occupy, that we identify with, the roles that we play in our society, how we relate with others, what our institutional responsibilities are because of our gender, and how those intersect with other forms of our identity, of our social positions, of our privileges, of our oppressions, and how those come together to shape our health.

Angela Kaida: I think that's a really exciting area of research and areas for learning.

Do you have one wish for the future of IGH?

Sheila Nyman: My wish it would be then, that more is done to include Indigenous people and Indigenous ways of being and knowing into all research, and include Indigenous people, Elders, knowledge holders as equal partners, where you have an Elder who's been around for a really long time and they have traditional teachings and knowledge and experience. That they're seen as equal to the persons with the PhDs, all my relations.

Angela Kaida: Yeah, I mean, one wish for the Institute is I want every health researcher in Canada to see themselves as members of this Institute, in the sense of all of us need to be asking questions in our research about how do sex and gender function to impact the health outcomes that we're interested in. So really, I see it as a calling in of the health research community.

Angela Kaida: And at the same time, because you said one wish, but this is like a 1.5 wish, is that we have a chance ahead of us to deepen our scholarship of how — what are the mechanisms that shape how sex and gender influence our health.

Imagine if we tested prostate cancer drugs only on female cell samples, or created anti-smoking campaigns only for men. Does that make sense?

Men, women, girls and boys are similar in many ways. But when it comes to our health and wellbeing, our differences matter.

Every cell is sexed and every person is gendered. Sex and gender influence our risk of developing certain diseases, how well we respond to medical treatments, and how often we seek health care. Did you know that in Canada men typically die younger than women, yet more women than men struggle with chronic illnesses? Why?

These are complicated questions. The more we understand how sex and gender affect health, the more we can improve health and wellbeing for everyone. It starts with better science.

As part of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Institute of Gender and Health fosters research that explores how sex and gender influence health. We use these findings to tackle the biggest health challenges. Our vision includes every body - men, women, girls, boys and gender diverse people.

In 10 years, we've made amazing progress. We've collaborated. Questioned. And we've built a community of researchers and knowledge users addressing our most pressing health challenges - integrating sex and gender to spark discovery, innovation and health impact.

Exciting breakthroughs prove that this field is advancing, but there's more to do. That's why IGH is working to become more than a funding institute. Our new strategic plan is focused on integration, innovation and impact. We will transform our health research systems. Our research methods. And the outcomes of gender, sex and health research.

We are multidisciplinary. We are international. And we are putting gender and sex on the health agenda.

We are shaping science for a healthier world.

Have you considered the possibilities?