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Welcome to our Summer 2024 newsletter! We had a great start in the new year and our activities are running at a fantastic tempo! In this edition, we're pleased to share the latest scientific publications, our past and upcoming events, awards but most importantly our newly established Foundation and the awareness and fundraising campaign aimed at supporting our research on women's brain health. Thank you for being part of our journey. Enjoy your reading!
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"The work conducted over the past three years was relentlessly focused on transforming our association into a Foundation. We are proud and grateful to share with you that this milestone has been successfully accomplished. Women's Brain Project became a Foundation on the 22nd of March. Today, we are known as the Women's Brain Foundation. Our mission is to advance research into understanding how sex and gender factors impact brain and mental health and more in general women's health, because the brain is the control center of our entire body and being.
Our work will continue to resolve the huge gap existing in medicine where women's specific needs have been overlooked. This is a great opportunity to redesign research, medicine and the healthcare system with women in mind. Thanks to our work initiated in 2016 today this topic has finally become mainstream, and we must work collaboratively to solve this unmet need for half of the population living on this planet: women. By bridging the gaps in understanding and addressing the unique healthcare needs of women, we can improve the health outcomes and quality of life for women everywhere”
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Our global "Women's Quota Campaign" was launched on 23rd May 2024 in the heart of Zurich, Switzerland. The campaign highlights to the public that a larger proportion of individuals diagnosed with neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, depression, anxiety, and migraines are women. The goal of this campaign is not only to raise awareness on women's unmet medical needs, but also to state our commitment to addressing the gender gap in Brain medicine through research and advocacy.
The campaign is being promoted in 5 languages (English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish) and for all the diseases mentioned above until we bring it to WEF 2025, where we will hold a round table on brain health. We extend our heartfelt appreciation to Ogilvy Switzerland, who generously crafted this awareness campaign to help us achieve our goal of an independent research institute.
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"Did you know that 2 out of 3 patients with dementia and Alzheimer's disease are women? And did you know that 80 percent of patients with migraine are women? What if we add multiple sclerosis, depression, anxiety? And what if we told you that more than 80 percent of caregivers, paid or unpaid, are women? The list goes on...
Due to a significant gap in medicine, research, and policy, women have received and continue to receive less-than-optimal medical care. We have established a research foundation that aims to tackle the impact of sex and gender on brain health. Our ultimate goal is to establish a research institute with a clear focus on sex and gender precision medicine, that will develop personalized therapies for females, males, and all gender spectra. Your support is crucial for this mission!
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We are thrilled to share that our CEO, Dr Antonella Santuccione Chadha, has been honoured with the Empowering Women Award 2024! The award was presented to her at the 9th edition of the League of Leading Ladies Conference.
Out of the 300 nominations, Dr Chadha was recognized for her pioneering efforts in gender medicine and her profound influence on the health of women across the globe. Congratulations Antonella!
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National plans and awareness campaigns as priorities for achieving global brain health
As a OneNeurology Partner, we contributed to this recent article published in The Lancet Global Health. Representatives of the OneNeurology Partnership, a consortium uniting global neurology organisations, take stock and advocate for urgent acceleration of IGAP* implementation. (*Intersectoral Global Action Plan on Epilepsy and Other Neurological Disorders 2022–2031 by the World Health Organisation). Read the full article
The impact of informant-related characteristics including sex/gender on assessment of Alzheimer’s disease severity
Earlier in March, we contributed an opinion article in the scientific journal Frontiers Global Women's Health. Experts recommend a multifaceted approach that integrates performance, informant, and self-report data to properly assess patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Read the full article
Abortion and Miscarriage on Twitter: Sentiment and Polarity Analysis from a gendered perspective
As part of the 16th ACM Web Science Conference, we published an article looking at opinions and sentiments on Twitter (now "X") surrounding miscarriage and abortion. Read the full article
Maximizing utility of neuropsychological measures in sex-specific predictive models of incident Alzheimer's disease in the Framingham Heart Study
This study included baseline neuropsychological data collected as part of the Framingham Heart Study to investigate sex differences in neuropsychological performance among elderly individuals without a diagnosis of dementia. Read the full article
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This book, a unique collaboration of global experts, was born out of the COVID pandemic and has since evolved to cover a diverse range of topics. From epidemiology to mental health, from treatment to risk prediction, and even drawing lessons from astronauts under space isolation, it offers a comprehensive and digestible read around pandemic prevention and AI.
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Dr Antonella Santuccione Chadha talks with Dr Marie McNeely about our policy and patients' roundtable outcomes and the importance of considering sex and gender factors in Parkinson's disease research, policy, and healthcare.
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Dr Antonella Santuccione Chadha and Shannon Cohn, share their expertise and personal stories to shed light on the disparities in healthcare, particularly in the context of Alzheimer’s disease and another disease that affects over 200,000,000 girls and women: endometriosis. This episode was hosted by Richard Lui, an author, filmmaker and anchor for NBC and MSNBC. The podcast was recorded at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos Switzerland in January 2024.
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We gave a keynote speech at the Milan Longevity Week in March where we presented findings about why women live longer but age worse all over the world. Then in April our latest scientific work was featured in a keynote as a speaker at the Women's Health Innovation Summit Europe. Dr Chadha represented the Women's Brain Foundation at the 1st edition of the Tech Tour Mental and Brain Health event in May. And to end May, our board member Rosa Sangiorgio was at the launch of the latest Economist Impact report where the panel agreed that stigma remains a challenge in advancing mental health.
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OneNeurology Meeting
We regrouped with our partners from OneNeurology to exchange updates, progresses and insights. Read more
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MedTalk by Health Science Club
Health Science Club, a student-led organization by ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich invited Dr Chadha to talk about the work of the Women's Brain Foundation. Read more
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NZZ Live – Frauen im Fokus der Medizinforschung – Fortschritt in Sicht?
Dr Chadha had the pleasure of being part of the panel at the NZZ Live discussion where she presented our awareness campaign. Read more
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- Health20 Summit 2024
- Women in Global Health Germany
- HLTH Europe
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Our workshops are offered in English, Italian or Spanish.
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