To celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March, with the 2023 campaign theme #EmbraceEquity, the Women’s Brain Project (WBP) is proud to launch a new White Paper it has commissioned to Economist Impact, which examines the economic benefits of investing in sex-and-gender specific brain research. The WBP provided expert counsel and guidance in the delivery of this project. The White Paper, Sex, gender and the brain: Towards an inclusive research agenda is informed by expert interviews and presents an economic impact framework to examine how sex and gender differences manifest across five brain diseases: Alzheimer’s Disease, Migraine, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease and Stroke.
The paper argues the need for greater efforts on sex- and gender-specific brain research based on the beneficial economic consequences of early and more reliable diagnosis, prevention, more effective treatments and disease management, all of which could help mitigate the impact of these conditions on individuals, families and society at large. The developed novel conceptual frameworks convey how sex-and-gender specific research can impact a country’s overall gross domestic product (GDP), for each of the brain diseases. As a follow-up to the White Paper, WBP plans to develop a robust economic model to quantify the economic implications of sex-and-gender differences in brain diseases and build an evidence-based case for investment. The initial pilot will focus on one geography for one disease area. Read the White Paper, here: https://www.womensbrainproject.com/ei-white-paper/