PESHAWAR: In a step towards advancing equitable and evidence-based healthcare education in Pakistan, Khyber Medical University (KMU), Peshawar, in collaboration with Aga Khan University (AKU), Karachi, has entered the Aim 3 pilot phase of a project aimed at integrating sex and gender perspectives into undergraduate medical education.
The project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was initiated in January last year to address the longstanding gaps in medical education, where biological sex differences and gender-related social determinants of health are often overlooked.
Global evidence increasingly demonstrates that sex and gender influence disease risk, symptom presentation, diagnosis, treatment response, and access to healthcare across specialties, including cardiology, orthopedics, surgery, immunology, mental health, and public health.
Despite growing international momentum, these perspectives remain insufficiently integrated into medical curricula across many low- and middle-income countries, including Pakistan.As part of the project’s implementation phase, KMU and AKU organised a two-day pilot workshop titled “Integration of Sex and Gender Education in the MBBS Curriculum” at the KMU Institute of Medical Sciences, Kohat.
The workshop engaged final-year MBBS faculty members in practical strategies to integrate sex and gender concepts into teaching, assessments, case-based learning, and clinical training.
The initiative is being led under the principal investigatorship of Prof Dr Ziaul Haq at KMU and Prof Dr Zainab Samad at AKU.At KMU, the Aim 3 pilot is being led by Dr Maria Ishaq Khattak, who serves as the KMU team lead for the project. She coordinated the pilot workshop alongside Dr Humera Adeeb, Dr Bushra Mehboob, and Dr Sayeda Saira Bokhari.
The workshop was conducted with institutional support from Dean Clinical Sciences Prof Dr Fozia Gul and Principal KIMS Kohat Prof Dr Mussarat Jabeen.
