Two years ago, the SGBA+ team at Women’s College Research Institute (WCRI) launched The Health Researcher’s Toolkit, a series of seven interactive e-learning modules focused on the integration of sex and gender in health research. The modules are designed to benefit both experienced and emerging researchers across a range of disciplines, from medical sciences to social sciences and everything in between.

This week the team launched a new eighth module, Intersectionality as a Research Lens: A Pathway to Better Science, which explores what intersectionality means, how it shapes a person’s lived identity and why it’s relevant.

We know health research that includes an intersectional lens is more scientifically rigorous and responsive to the diverse health needs of people in Ontario, across Canada and around the world. Similarly, intersectionality can advance equity because it helps us understand how a person’s multiple identity factors can lead to discrimination or privilege. As such, intersectionality plays a dual role in shaping health outcomes as well as an individual’s lived experience.

This new module is an important tool to help public health practitioners and health researchers better understand and apply an intersectionality lens to their projects, proposals, and studies.