© Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation I Khadija Farah I Kikambala, Kenya I 2024

Upstream Sex and Gender Marker for Health

A tool to increase the sex and gender intentionality of upstream investments during investment design.

Upstream Sex and Gender Integration Marker

This Upstream Sex and Gender Integration Marker is a learning tool for the foundation’s upstream health investments. It is intended to be used by investment owners when designing and refining an investment and to spark conversation with grantees.

The purpose of this tool is to enable investment owners and teams to more intentionally integrate relevant considerations on:

  • Sex as a biological variable—anatomy, physiology, genetics, hormones, etc.—and/or
  • Gender —social variables such as roles, norms, relations, and power.

The tool was updated in November 2024.

Download Upstream Sex and Gender Integration Marker

For additional resources and learning, see below a non-exhaustive selection of materials including self-paced e-learning.

Resources

Additional Resources

Self-service learning

NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health e-learning courses are free and open to the public. Topics include:

  • Sex as a biological variable (SABV) primer
  • Bench to Bedside: Integrating sex and gender to improve human health
  • Introduction to Sex and gender: core concepts for health-related research

Canada’s Institute of Gender and Health offers free, open access and interactive training modules to integrate sex and gender across health research. Topics include:

  • Sex and gender in biological research
  • Sex and gender primary data collection with human participants
  • Sex and gender in the analysis of secondary data from human participants