Registration Link: Click Here
MH Conversations and Connections Series – Lunchtime Seminar
Title: Why Sex/Gender-Sensitive Medicine Is Not a Niche Subject: On Terminology, Trial Design, and Clinical Practice
Date: 7 October 2026 (Wed)
Time: 12:30 – 1:45 pm HKT
Venue: 3SR-SR4 = Room 403, 4/F, HKUMed Academic Building, 3 Sassoon Road
Registration Link: Click Here
Abstract:
For decades, medicine was shaped around a prototypical patient who served as the reference point for medical research and clinical care: male, white, cisgender, socioeconomically privileged, and able-bodied. As a result, many perspectives, bodies, and lived realities outside this norm have been underrepresented in knowledge production, research design, and clinical practice. This has contributed to diagnostic delays, poorer health outcomes, and healthcare systems that still do not serve or treat everyone equally well.
A sex/gender-sensitive approach to medicine can help address these gaps in data, knowledge, and clinical practice across medical disciplines and serves as an important pillar of precise, robust, patient-centred care. It provides a foundation for a future of medicine in which everyone is represented in textbooks and guidelines and has access to high-quality, equitable care.
In her talk, Awa Naghipour explores what sex/gender-sensitive medicine means, illustrates why it matters for clinical practice, discusses the challenges we still face, and examines what it takes to bring about meaningful and sustainable change.
Speaker:
Awa Naghipour is a physician, research associate, advisor and health advocate specializing in sex/gender- and discrimination-sensitive medicine. Her research and teaching focus on inclusive, critically reflective, and context-sensitive healthcare, with particular emphasis on health equity and the transfer of knowledge into teaching, clinical, and health policy practice. After completing her medical degree at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, and working clinically in internal medicine, she has been affiliated with the first German chair of Sex and Gender-Sensitive Medicine at Bielefeld University since 2022. A central focus of her work is the question of how inclusive, sex/gender- and discrimination-sensitive clinical practice can be structurally embedded and ensured—e.g. at the institutional level through clinical practice guidelines. She is a co-initiator and co-founder of the non-profit organization Feministische Medizin e.V. (feminist medicine) and contributes to health policy development through her work in numerous (inter)national expert committees.
Welcome to join us!
Enquiry: Please contact Mr Edison Cheng (mehu@hku.hk).