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Background: All European countries need to increase the number of health professionals in the near future. Most efforts have not brought the expected results so far. The current notion is that this is mainly related to the fact that female physicians will clearly outnumber their male colleagues within a few years in nearly all European countries. Still, women are underrepresented in leadership and research positions throughout Europe.
Objectives: The MedGoFem project addresses multiple perspectives with the participation of multiple stakeholders. The goal is to facilitate the implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEP) in university hospitals; thereby, transforming the working conditions for women working as researchers and highly qualified physicians simultaneously. Our proposed innovation, a crosscutting topic in all research and clinical activities, must become an essential part of university hospital strategic concepts.
Methods: We capture the current status with gender-sensitive demographic data concerning medical staff and conduct Web-based surveys to identify cultural, country-specific, and interdisciplinary factors conducive to women’s academic success. Individual expectations of employees regarding job satisfaction and working conditions will be visualized based on “personal construct theory” through repertory grids. An expert board working out scenarios and a gender topic agenda will identify culture-, nation-, and discipline-specific aspects of gender equality. University hospitals in 7 countries will establish consensus groups, which work on related topics. Hospital management supports the consensus groups, valuates group results, and shares discussion results and suggested measures across groups. Central findings of the consensus groups will be prepared as exemplary case studies for academic teaching on research and work organization, leadership, and management.
Results: A discussion group on gender equality in academic medicine will be established on an internationally renowned open-research platform. Project results will be published in peer-reviewed journals with high-impact factors. In addition, workshops on gender dimension in research using the principles of Gendered Innovation will be held. Support and consulting services for hospitals will be introduced in order to develop a European consulting service.
Conclusions: The main impact of the project will be the implementation of innovative GEP tailored to the needs of university hospitals, which will lead to measurable institutional change in gender equality. This will impact the research at university hospitals in general, and will improve career prospects of female researchers in particular. Simultaneously, the gender dimension in medical research as an innovation factor and mandatory topic will be strengthened and integrated in each individual university hospital research activity. Research funding organizations can use the built knowledge to include mandatory topics for funding applications to enforce the use and implementation of GEP in university hospitals.
Representing a phylogenetically old and very basic mechanism of inhibitory neurotransmission, glycine receptors have been implicated in the modulation of behavioral components underlying defensive responding toward threat. As one of the first findings being confirmed by genome-wide association studies for the phenotype of panic disorder and agoraphobia, allelic variation in a gene coding for the glycine receptor beta subunit (GLRB) has recently been associated with increased neural fear network activation and enhanced acoustic startle reflexes. On the basis of two independent healthy control samples, we here aimed to further explore the functional significance of the GLRB genotype (rs7688285) by employing an intermediate phenotype approach. We focused on the phenotype of defensive system reactivity across the levels of brain function, structure, and physiology. Converging evidence across both samples was found for increased neurofunctional activation in the (anterior) insular cortex in GLRB risk allele carriers and altered fear conditioning as a function of genotype. The robustness of GLRB effects is demonstrated by consistent findings across different experimental fear conditioning paradigms and recording sites. Altogether, findings provide translational evidence for glycine neurotransmission as a modulator of the brain’s evolutionary old dynamic defensive system and provide further support for a strong, biologically plausible candidate intermediate phenotype of defensive reactivity. As such, glycine-dependent neurotransmission may open up new avenues for mechanistic research on the etiopathogenesis of fear and anxiety disorders.