The MESSAGE Project
The MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project aims to improve the integration of sex and gender considerations across data collection, analysis and reporting in biomedical, health and care research in the UK.
This initiative is bringing together stakeholders from across the UK to co-design a sex and gender policy framework for funding and regulatory organisations and supporting policy implementation across the UK research sector
Ensure your research complies with new UK sex and gender policies
The MESSAGE policy framework, training materials for researchers and funding organisations, an annotated bibliography (to understand sex and gender dimensions identified in previous research in your field), and further resources about how to integrate sex and gender in your work will be launched on this website in 2024.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us
Why is it important to account
for sex and gender?
Sex and gender characteristics have a fundamental effect on health and illness, influencing the diseases and symptoms a person develops, their experience of that disease (including treatments available to them and possible side effects), and their overall outcomes. Currently, biomedical, health and care research does not adequately account for, and therefore understand, relevant sex and gender differences in disease.
There are number of reasons why there is critical need to understand these differences in research in the UK:
