Objectives
The sponsorship has set the following goals:
Education and awareness:
We raise awareness and train healthcare professionals about gender differences to ensure the best care.
Individual treatment approaches:
Gender medicine recognizes that men and women have different health needs and offers personalized therapies.
Mental health:
Gender-specific approaches to mental health provide targeted support and therapy.
Holistic approaches:
Interdisciplinary collaboration for comprehensive health strategies that address all aspects of your health.
Heart health in focus:
Cardiovascular diseases manifest themselves differently in women than in men. Gender medicine ensures that no one is overlooked.
Closing gaps:
For decades, medical studies were predominantly conducted on men. Gender medicine calls for gender-equitable research and care.
Tailor-made prevention:
Individual preventive programs for men and women reduce risks and promote health.
Optimized medication:
Gender-specific differences in metabolism influence the effectiveness and side effects of medications. Gender medicine optimally adapts the treatment.
Training & Support:
We are convinced that the targeted promotion of young scientific talent is crucial to achieving groundbreaking medical advances.
Why Gender Medicine?
So far, medical studies and illustrations have been conducted almost exclusively on white men. This leads to knowledge deficits regarding diseases and medication tolerance in women and other genders. In the training of medical staff, gender knowledge is still inadequately conveyed, although it could improve patient care. Disease symptoms and courses, as well as the effects of medications, can vary greatly between women and men. Genetic predisposition is partly responsible for this: every single brain, heart, and liver cell, as well as the hormone balance, are different in women and men. The list could go on indefinitely. The symptoms of many diseases, from heart disease to strokes to cancer, manifest themselves differently depending on gender and require differentiated treatment. Gender medicine, as part of personalized medicine, is concerned with exactly what these differences are and how medical professionals should take them into account. Precision medicine is a research focus of University Medicine Zurich. As the first university in Switzerland, the University of Zurich created a Chair of Gender Medicine at the beginning of May 2024 to research gender medicine and integrate it into teaching and practice.