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:
How can this website help you?
Funders & Regulators
The MESSAGE policy framework has been co-designed by the UK research sector to be adopted by funders and regulators. It has been specifically designed to be usable by organisations of different sizes and working across a range of disease areas.
This framework is considered the gold standard sex and gender policy for UK organisations. However, you are welcome to adapt it if desired to the needs of your organisation.
Implementation of sex and gender policies is essential to improve scientific rigour and reliability. It will also ensure the UK keeps in step with international best practice.
The MESSAGE project is preparing guidance to support you to implement a sex and gender policy. Guidance will be launched on this website in 2024, and you are welcome to get in touch with the MESSAGE team if you would like to discuss implementation for your own organisation.
Researchers
Research funders in the UK will be adopting sex and gender policies from as early as autumn 2024. These policies will require you to explain in funding applications how your proposed research design accounts for sex and gender dimensions. They will apply to both pre-clinical and clinical studies across the research cycle, including initial study design, recruitment/procurement of participants, data analysis and reporting of findings.
This may involve learning new skills and familiarising yourself with new research literature. This website will host guidance materials covering what is meant by sex and gender in research, how to collect data on these variables, and sex- and gender-based analysis. These materials will be launched in 2024.
You may also wish to take a look at the MESSAGE policy framework which sets out the details of new funder policy expectations.
Patients
The aim of the MESSAGE project is to improve the health outcomes of all people. By ensuring that researchers account for sex and gender dimensions, the MESSAGE policy framework will increase scientific understanding of how health conditions and treatments affect different populations based on their different biological and/or social characteristics. Strengthening the evidence base in this way will ensure that the care patients receive is more personalised and effective.
This website gives several case studies of how poor accounting of sex and gender leads to worse health outcomes for all people, but particularly for cis women and sex- and gender diverse people.
Publishers
Academic publishers play a crucial role in ensuring that researchers report their findings in a way that adequately accounts for sex and gender. This includes fostering transparency in reporting of sex and/or gender distributions of study samples and ensuring data is sex- and/or gender-disaggregated.
The introduction of sex and gender policies by funders and regulators will improve how researchers account for these dimensions in their work. You can help motivate researchers to report sex- and gender-specific findings, both through adoption of policy requirements about sex and gender reporting and through incentives such as focused special editions.
The MESSAGE policy framework sets out the expectations that researchers will be expected to meet to receive research funding. You may wish to think about how publisher policies can reflect these stipulations to ensure that there is support and accountability for researchers across the research pipeline.