PRUE TORRANCE, NHMRC: My name is Prue Torrance. I'm the general manager of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). NHMRC, along with the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), is committed to sex and gender equity in health and medical research.
Sex and gender, along with variations in sex characteristics and sexual orientation, affect people's health and their well-being and illnesses that they experience. And that includes influencing the medical conditions that they experience across their lifetime. It includes how the disease progresses. It includes the treatments that they access and the care that's provided to them, along with how they might respond to treatments, and importantly how people engage with and experience the health system. So, attention to sex and gender and the related variables in health and medical research will make a difference to people's health outcomes. So, importantly, it will actually lead to new discoveries and new innovations if we focus on sex and gender in research. It will change the treatments that are available and make them more appropriate for the population, and it will help us improve access and participation for people in the community and really lead to improved health outcomes.
This is why NHMRC and the Medical Research Future Fund developed a statement on sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics, and sexual orientation in health and medical research. And this statement endorses the ABS definitions. So that's really quite important. The ABS standard uses a very similar title to the statement and defines sex as that recorded at birth and it's generally associated with the biological characteristics innate in the person. And gender really is about one's true self and can be based on somebody's identity, experience or expression.
And then, with variations of sex characteristics, this is where a person, their innate genetics, hormones, physical characteristics don't align with our medical norms about what male and female bodies look like. And this is why we really need to have this separate category for variations of sex characteristics. It's also called intersex. That might be a more familiar term for people. For intersex people, sometimes it's identified at birth, but more often it's identified later in life, including at puberty. And that's why we really need to have this as a separate data definition and category than sex recorded at birth. And then finally, sexual orientation, which encompasses sexual identity, attraction, and experience, also affects people's health outcomes.
So, really, good science requires us to understand the distinctions between these four categories and to apply them appropriately, and importantly, not to conflate them in data collection, analysis and reporting. So NHMRC endorses these definitions, but also our statement, joint with MRFF, provides some better practice examples and guidance and advice so researchers can look at that and work out how to apply these variables across their research and across the research life cycle. It also promotes safe and inclusive research partnerships with community members. So that's really important.
But the statement's been out for a little while. What's new now is that from 1 January, applicants to NHMRC and MRFF grant opportunities will be required to reflect on these variables and to incorporate them appropriately in their study design. That doesn't mean that all research will suddenly incorporate all variables. Researchers are free to include or exclude any or all of the variables in their study design. The important thing is they must provide a sound, evidence-based justification for their decision. And that material, the justification and how they've incorporated the variables in their study design, will be taken into account by the peer reviewers when they're assessing grant applications. They'll be looking for good, high-quality research methodology that requires the incorporation of these variables as appropriate. They'll also be looking at whether the knowledge gain is significant for the community and is it relevant research for the community. It's really going to make a difference.
And I just want to emphasise that the benefits are for everyone. We would see improvements in women's health because the under-representation of women will be addressed in health and medical research. We will see an increase in the safe and effective participation of trans and gender diverse people, people with variations of sex characteristics and diverse sexual orientations - we'll see them participating in health and medical research and deriving the benefits. But we will also learn a lot about men's health. We will learn how men's experience of disease and health is different, and we may even identify evidence gaps and under-researched areas to support men's health. It really will benefit everyone.
So together, the new interventions that we're introducing in our grant programs and the support and resources that's available on our website, including the statement, will help us develop research that is truly inclusive, rigorous and representative of the community and drive improved health outcomes for all of the community.
REBECCA WHITE, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING: This announcement today is acknowledging that we want everybody, no matter who they are, to have equity in health outcomes, and that requires us to make sure we understand how symptoms might present and how we might diagnose and then how we treat people better. Making sure that we embed in the research principles an understanding of sex and gender variations means that get better evidence, means that we can provide better pathways for health outcomes and equity of health outcomes for all Australians no matter who they are.
This work was guided by the Women's Health Advisory Council that the Albanese-Labor Government established so that we could develop better policies for women's health in Australia. The outcome has meant that this statement, which will be embedded in the work of the NHMRC and the MRFF, which are the research bodies that fund medical research in Australia, will allow us to better understand how women in particular are assessed when doing clinical trials, when understanding how might perform in a woman's body, when understanding how we might diagnose particular symptoms for particular diseases.
Women aren't just small men and for a very long time that's how they've been treated by medical research. And this has meant, in some cases, that we don't properly understand how diseases affect a woman compared to how they affect a man, and also affects the way that we provide treatment options. This is about providing equity and access for everybody no matter who they are, but also improving the evidence base that will lead to better health outcomes for all Australians.
I'm really pleased to see progress on this work because we understand that if the research is good, it is the foundation that leads to better treatment pathways and better health outcomes. And at the moment the research is a bit patchy when it comes our understanding of sex and gender variations and what that means for people when they are presenting with different health conditions. This is about filling in the pictures, filling in the blank parts so that we can improve health equity across the country and improve health outcomes. And I'm really pleased to see progress on this work.
I'm going to hand across to Anushka, who's the CEO here.
ANUSHKA PATEL, CEO, GEORGE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL HEALTH: Well, my name is Anushka Patel. I'm the CEO of the George Institute for Global Health, affiliated with the University of New South Wales, Sydney. I'm really proud to have had a role in assisting the NHMRC and the MRFF in developing the statement through the Centre for Sex and Gender in Health and Medical Research. That's a collaboration between the George Institute, University of New South Wales and Deakin University. So, we're very grateful for the opportunity to provide advice.
As a researcher, I'd like to emphasise the absolute criticality of considering these variables in research. It's a matter of research quality - high research quality, impact of our research. The necessity for the impact of this research to improve the health of all Australians makes it necessary for this initiative and for sex, gender variations in sex characteristics and sexual orientation to be considered by all researchers in their research efforts.
We really look forward to incorporating this into our own research. In my own field of cardiology, we see many examples where this hasn’t been done in the past, and it can really make a real impact on the future health of people in this country. Thank you.