Are we moving the dial? Canadian Health Research Funding Trends for Women’s Health, 2S/LGBTQ+ Health, Sex, or Gender Considerations

Background Sex and gender impacts health outcomes and disease risk throughout life. The health of women and members of the Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual (2S/LGBTQ+) community is often compromised as they experience delays in diagnosis. Distinct knowledge gaps in the health of these populations has prompted funding agencies to mandate incorporation of sex and gender into research. Sex-and gender-informed research perspectives and methodology increases rigor, promotes discovery, and expands the relevance of health research. Thus, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) implemented a Sex and Gender-based Analysis (SGBA) framework recommending the inclusion of SGBA in project proposals in 2010 and then mandating the incorporation of SGBA into grant proposals in 2019. To examine whether this mandate resulted in increased mention of sex or gender in funded research abstracts, we searched the publicly available database of grant abstracts funded by CIHR to analyze the percentage of abstracts that mentioned sex or gender of the population to be studied. To better understand broader health equity issues we also examined whether the funded grant abstracts mentioned either female-specific health research or research within the 2S/LGBTQ+ community.

Results We categorized a total of 8,964 Project and Operating grant abstracts awarded from 2009- 2020 based on their study of female-specific or a 2S/LGBTQ+ populations or their mention of sex or gender. Overall, under 3% of grant abstracts funded by CIHR explicitly mentioned sex and/or gender, as 1.94% of grant abstracts mentioned sex, and 0.66% mentioned gender. As one of the goals of SGBA is to inform on health equity and understudied populations with respect to SGBA, we also found that 5.92% of grant abstracts mentioned female-specific outcomes, and 0.35% of grant abstracts focused on the 2S/LGBTQ+ community.

Conclusions Although there was an increased number of funded grants with abstracts that mentioned sex and 2S/LGBTQ+ health across time, these increases were less than 2% between 2009 to 2020. The percentage of funded grants with abstracts mentioning female-specific health or gender differences did not change significantly over time. The percentage of funding dollars allocated to grants in which the abstracts mentioned sex or gender also did not change substantially from 2009-2020, with grant abstracts mentioning sex or female-specific research increasing by 1.26% and 3.47% respectively, funding allocated to research mentioning gender decreasing by 0.49% and no change for 2S/LGBTQ+-specific health. Our findings suggest more work needs to be done to ensure the public can evaluate what populations will be examined with the funded research with respect to sex and gender to advance awareness and health equity in research.

Highlights

• The percentage of funded grants in which the abstracts mentioned sex or gender in health research remained largely unchanged from 2009 to 2020 with the largest increase of 1.57% for those mentioning sex.

• Total funding amounts for grants that mentioned sex or gender in the abstract stagnated or declined from 2009 to 2020.

• The percentage of funded grants in which the abstracts focusing on female-specific health did not change across 2009-2020, but the percentage of funding dollars increased by 3.47%.

• The percentage of grants in which the abstracts mentioned 2S/LGBTQ+-specific health more than tripled across 2009-2020 but remained less than 1% of all funded grants.