Uppsala project receives 72 million (UNT)
Alkistis Skalkidou is a gynecologist and senior consultant at the women’s clinic in Uppsala. She leads the new interdisciplinary center for women’s health in Uppsala.
Significant funding is currently being invested in research on women’s health. A Uppsala-based initiative bringing together around 40 researchers from different disciplines has been awarded SEK 72 million. “We want Uppsala’s interdisciplinary center for women’s health to become something the whole world recognizes,” says Alkistis Skalkidou, principal investigator at the center in Uppsala.
“For a long time, it has been normalized that many women’s health conditions are supposed to be painful. One exception is breast cancer care, where research funding has led to major advances. But many other conditions that are not life-threatening have been neglected. For example, postpartum depression, menopausal symptoms, and endometriosis are not about complaining. They reduce quality of life, contribute to increased illness, and cost society money.”
But now things are set to change.
The WHOLE project in Uppsala, led by Alkistis Skalkidou, brings together around 40 researchers from Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet across 17 different disciplines. The researchers range from physicians, psychiatrists, and obstetricians to legal scholars, psychologists, economists, and literary scholars.
With SEK 72 million over six years from the Swedish government research council Forte, the research center will study women’s health across all stages of life.
About half of the funding will go to individual research projects. The rest will be used to strengthen the center’s structures and to ensure that research findings are communicated to healthcare services.