How to SGBA: Lessons Learned on Incorporating Gender into Research
November 17, 2021, 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
This workshop is a part of a series that will bring you practical guidance about how to incorporate sex and gender considerations into human and animal research throughout each phase of the research process—from developing your research methodology, collecting data, analysing data and disseminating research. Our “How to SGBA” workshop series was developed by trainee, faculty and community experts that are a part of the WHRC’s SGBA Working Group.
Four seasoned academics will join us as guest speakers for this event and use their own research as case studies to demonstrate how they approached and conquered the challenges of incorporating gender into their research methodologies and data collection practices. The event will kick off with short presentations from each speaker to introduce you to their work and reveal key decisions they had to make and tools that helped them along the way. Speakers will then engage in a panel discussion, moderated by our event host Dr. Gillian Einstein, to critically examine current trends in sex and gender research. Following this, audience members will move into breakout rooms to discuss their own research and ask for guidance from two sex and gender-based analysis (SGBA) experts from the Institute for Gender and Health Trainee Network, and members from our SGBA Working Group.
We welcome all faculty, trainees and members of the community who are engaged in research to attend this event! We encourage all registrants to watch the first workshop in this series to learn about the importance and value of SGBA.
Agenda
12:00 pm: Welcome Remarks
12:05 pm: Speaker Presentations
12:35 pm: Panel Discussion
1:00 pm: Breakout Rooms
1:25 pm: Closing Remarks
moderator
 | Gillian Einstein, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women's Brain Health and Aging, University of Toronto. |
Speakers
 | Louise Pilote, MD, MPH, PhD Dr. Louise Pilote is a Professor of Medicine at McGill University where she holds a James McGill chair. She is a practicing general internist and led the McGill division of general internal medicine from 2006-2016. As a clinician scientist, Dr. Pilote has directed several research initiatives that led to important new insights into the determinants of premature coronary disease. With support from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Dr. Pilote led the GENESIS team which clarified the role of sex and gender in diagnosis, treatment and outcomes in heart disease and build capacity in women’s heart health research. As a co-principal investigator of the CAN-AIM team, funded by CIHR, Dr. Pilote has also harnessed big data to study sex differences in the effectiveness and safety of cardiac drugs and devices. |
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 | Greta Bauer, PhD Dr. Bauer is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and a CIHR Sex and Gender Science Chair. Dr. Bauer came to Western after completing her PhD at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and brings a strong public health focus to her work. Her primary research interests are in social marginalization and health, particularly as related to sexual and gender minority communities, and in quantitative research methodology for studying communities that experience marginalization.
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 | Robert-Paul Juster, PhD Dr. Juster is a Neuroscientist focused on stress biology, mental health, coping, and resilience with a focus on sex and gender perspectives. In particular, Dr. Juster’s research includes LGBTQ+ people and how stigma exposure across lifespan development. Dr. Juster holds a CIHR Sex and Gender Science Chair of LGBTQI2S Wellness and Resilience.
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 | Sofia Ahmed, MD MMsc Dr. Ahmed is a Nephrologist and clinician-scientist with a focus on sex differences in human cardiovascular and kidney physiology and outcomes. Dr. Ahmed is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, Cumming School of Medicine at University of Calgary and is the Vice-Chair of Research for the Department of Medicine. |
Breakout Rooms
Meet your experts! Breakout rooms are available at this event for you to discuss your own research and ask for guidance from sex and gender-based analysis (SGBA) experts from the Institute for Gender and Health Trainee Network, and members from our SGBA Working Group.
Clinical Research
 | Chantal Rytz Chantal, MSc, is a second-year PhD student at the University of Calgary, working with Dr. Sofia Ahmed. Her research program is aimed at assessing the cardiovascular implications of gender-affirming hormone therapy in transgender women. Chantal's work has been recognized by numerous awards, including an Alberta Innovates Patient-Oriented Research (AbSPORU) Graduate Studentship, and was recently awarded first place and Presenters Choice in the internationally-recognized 2021 Three Minute Thesis (3MT) University of Calgary competition for her work. |
 | Veronica Guadagni Dr. Guadagni is a postdoctoral fellow investigating how a six-month aerobic exercise intervention can improve older adults cognitive ability and brain health, and the role of sleep quality as a mediator in this relationship. Dr. Guadagni's clinical research interests include Neurodegenerative Diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias, Sleep disorders and more recent evaluation of sleep in the ICU.
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 | Parisa Alaei Parisa is a first-year PhD student in kinesiology under supervision of Dr Jenn Jakobi. She received her BSc and MSc degrees in physiotherapy and Sport physiotherapy, and is now working on sex related differences in force steadiness and motor prosperities.
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Biomedical Research
 | Jennifer Williams Jennifer is a PhD candidate at McMaster University in the Vascular Dynamics Lab, supervised by Dr. Maureen MacDonald. Her primary research is focused on the influence of hormonal contraceptives on peripheral arterial function and structure, and underlying mechanisms. Jennifer is also involved in sex and gender research, education and knowledge translation. |
 | Bonnie Lee Bonnie is a neuroscience PhD student at the University of British Columbia studying with Dr. Liisa Galea in the Laboratory of Behavioural Neuroendocrinology. Her research is focused on understanding the impacts of motherhood and Alzheimer's disease risk on the aging brain. In particular, she is interested in how previous parity (pregnancy and motherhood) and presence of the APOE4 allele (a major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s Disease) may interact to affect cognition and neuroplasticity in middle age. Bonnie is also interested in how hormone therapy use history may contribute to this relationship. Her research has implications for the importance of considering reproductive history and genotype in aging and Alzheimer's disease research. |
 | Hashim Islam Hashim is a postdoctoral fellow at UBC Okanagan. His research examines how overactivation of immune cells (i.e., inflammation) contributes to the development of type 2 diabetes. As part of this research, he is interested in the impact of biological sex on immune cell function. |
Quantitative Research
 | Adelaide Jensen Adelaide is a first-year PhD student in experimental psychology at the University of Ottawa, with a B.A. in psychology from McGill University. Her research is focused on studying the influence of oral contraceptive use on episodic memory and executive functions in young women. She is also very interested in the role of sex hormones on cognition across the female lifespan as well as sex differences in aging and cognitive decline. |
 | Sonja Senthanar Dr. Senthanar is working on a program of research that examines the return to work outcomes/trajectories, following a work injury, of immigrant workers when compared to Canadian-born workers within British Columbia. Sonja completed her doctoral studies in the School of Public Health & Health Systems at the University of Waterloo in 2019. Her dissertation used a qualitative feminist approach to explore the employment integration experiences of refugee women. Her primary research interests include employment outcomes, gender, and work disability relating primarily to immigrant and refugee populations as well as how these relationships change within the context of new forms of work such as precarious employment. |
 | Emilie Theberge Emilie is a Master’s student in the department of Medical Genetics at UBC. Under the co-supervision of Dr. Jessica Dennis and Dr. Wendy Robinson at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute, she is investigating sex differences in the polygenic risk of depression and shared associations with cardiovascular disease (CVD) in adults in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) biobank. By conducting a sex-stratified analysis of this “big data” of genetic and health information, inclusive of frequently-omitted X-chromosome data, she is uncovering significantly different associations of disease variables associated with depression and CVD between males and females. She is passionate about advocating for awareness for sex and gender differences in the symptomology, presentation, comorbidity and medical management of depression and CVD. |
Qualitative Research
 | Valerie Webber Valerie is a PhD candidate in Community Health & Humanities at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She holds degrees in sexuality studies, medical anthropology, and public health. She has worked on several qualitative research projects about health, gender, and sexuality, including a study of queer safer sex politics and a study about the impact of sex/gender norms on vulvodynia diagnosis. Valerie’s work can be found in Sexualities, Critical Public Health, Sexual Medicine, Sexuality & Culture, and Porn Studies. She has published on sex research ethics in the journal Forum: Qualitative Social Research, and most recently she appears in the journal Synoptique with a piece from her fieldwork-based dissertation about the politics of occupational health in porn production. You can find her on Twitter @publicpubics.
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 | Saryn Hingston Saryn (she/they) is a Master’s Student in Community Health Sciences. She does qualitative research with sex and gender minority communities with a focus on disability. She is an IGH Trainee and LIM student with the joint MSc/MD program. |