Meet Dr Cara Tannenbaum, Distinguished Fellow

Dr Cara Tannenbaum is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the Université de Montreal and a former Scientific Director of the Canadian Institute of Health Research-Institute of Gender and Health.

Q&A Interview with Dr. Cara Tannenbaum

Q: what inspired you to pursue a career in health research, particularly focusing on gender and aging?

Well, I've always been passionate about women's health, and I'm also fascinated by systems and organisational change. Throughout my career, I wanted to help women seeking care navigate the healthcare system, because I saw that they often fell through the cracks. 

I quickly realised that it wasn't just women, but rather a combination of sex, biological factors and gender, social norms, identities, roles and behaviours that led to this problem. After I completed my medical training and started practicing, I opened an older women's pelvic health clinic. However, there was no good treatment guidelines because women and older people had been excluded from clinical studies. My observations of women and women’s health not being prioritised led me to build my work in this space to strengthen the evidence base for women and improve care. 

Q: What do you consider your most impactful achievements as the Scientific Director of the Canadian Institute of Gender and Health?

One of my most rewarding achievements has been embedding sex- and gender-based analysis into Canada’s health research landscape. It was essential to challenge the misconception that medical research is inherently gender-neutral. We changed policy and developed tools and mechanisms that assist researchers and other stakeholders, to systematically integrate sex and gender in their research, resulting in more robust, inclusive, and actionable findings. For instance, the projects funded under our initiatives have directly informed clinical practices, such as recognizing how sex and gender differences affect drug efficacy or mental health outcomes, along with supporting the growth of sex and gender-based research, focusing on the health of indigenous communities as well as boys and men’s health and launching Canada’s pan-Canadian Women’s Health Initiative.

Another notable example is how sex and gender analyses are now becoming part of the approval processes for drugs and treatments in Canada. This ensures interventions are safe and effective for all populations, not just the "average male subject" traditionally used in clinical trials. My collaboration with policy-makers also addresses broader societal issues, such as ensuring that women researcher’s needs were accounted for during the COVID-19 pandemic, and introducing interventions that removed gender bias from funding processes.

Q: What are the research priorities that you are keen on picking up in your engagement as a distinguished fellow at The George Institute for Global Health?

I am keen to work with The George Institute’s Global Women’s Health Program Lead, Jane Hirst and other team members in the UK office working on the Message Project.  For instance, I am excited to engage in implementation science to better how health research funding agencies in the United Kingdom will proceed to ensure that sex and gender is considered in research. This is quite close to my work in Canada, and I intend to contribute to this space in Australia as well, working with both Commonwealth and State funding organisations to adapt implementation strategies. 

Further around research priorities, I hope to contribute in the menopause space. Menopause is one of the areas in women's health that has been neglected over the years. People too often consider women as just small men, and believe that if you do research on men, then, by default, it should apply to women. But that's not true. There are conditions that are unique to women because of their anatomy, genetics, their hormones or physiology. And then there's conditions that apply to or affect men and women, but they either disproportionately affect women or manifest differently in women. 

We currently have a lot to learn about menopause. Better research will allow women to make better choices about how to manage their symptoms.  We need to apply an intersectional perspective as the little research that has been done on menopause has been conducted mainly in white women.  Understanding the experiences of women of colour or different backgrounds, who have experienced menopause at a younger age because of surgery or chemotherapy, or who experience symptoms because of gender-affirming therapies is a priority, particularly with respect to supportive workplace policies. 

Q: Could you share some insights into the challenges you would have encountered in leading the sex and gender-focused health research, and what were your learnings navigating those challenges?

One of the biggest challenges was overcoming resistance within the scientific community. Early in my career, there was limited recognition of the importance of sex and gender in research. Many viewed these variables as non-essential or as complicating factors. To address this, I emphasised education, created accessible guidelines, and highlighted tangible benefits—such as improved accuracy in clinical trials. By collaborating with institutions and policy-makers, we demonstrated that considering sex and gender isn’t just ethical—it also produces better science. This cultural shift in the research ecosystem is one of the achievements I’m most proud of. 

Q: Looking ahead, what are your key priorities for advancing sex and gender research in any specific region?

 In Australia I helped lead the launch of The Australian Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine earlier in 2024, and am thrilled to see the potential the Centre has to offer in advancing sex and gender within health research in Australia. I am also excited to be a part of the launch of the Victoria hub for the Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine.

I will be working with the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia to implement accountability measures for researchers. From my experience in Canada, we learned a lot from asking principal investigators how they were taking into account sex or gender in their research, and then asking the evaluators of the grant applications to say whether the integration of sex or gender was a strength, a weakness, or not applicable to the application.  We demonstrated that we could fundamentally change the core of what constitutes research excellence by showing that if two out of three evaluators thought that sex and gender were appropriately accounted for, then a grant was twice as likely to get funded. Supporting a similar change in Australia would be amazing. I know that at the national level, people are talking about it, but it's time for action!