There has never been a more important time to focus on women’s health and on career advancement for women.
The pandemic has seen women hit hard on many fronts, juggling the burdens of working from home whilst shouldering the main load of home-schooling and caring responsibilities, alongside greater job uncertainty from casual and part time roles. This has impacted on career progress especially in academia and in early to mid-career stages.
Mental health concerns have also been highlighted, especially among those of reproductive age, with women who are pregnant reporting higher levels of anxiety. We are also seeing women who were planning a family delaying their plans due to COVID-19 uncertainty, new parents relatively unsupported after birth and pregnant women excluded from many COVID-19 clinical trials.
Monash Partners are therefore thrilled to join forces with translation research centres nationally, under the auspices of our peak body, the Australian Health Research Alliance (AHRA) to form the Women’s Health Research, Translation and Impact Network, to address priority areas for women and girls across physical and mental health and to support career advancement for women in health and medical research.
We thank the Morrison Government, The Hon Greg Hunt MP and the Medical Research Future Fund for their funding of $5 million over five years for this priority.
Further opportunities for funded innovation to address and meet clinical and community needs are currently underway through the Monash Institute of Medical Engineering, the clinical innovation platform of Monash Partners. This includes seed funding rounds and the incredibly popular funded summer scholarship program to embed top IT and engineering students with clinical teams in our health services to map, scope, identify and progress innovative solutions to frontline health problems (see funding details here).
Stay safe,
Professor Helena Teede
Executive Director, Monash Partners
