WSC 2025 | Key priorities of the GENESIS initiative to improve stroke care in women

We fall under the programming from the World Stroke Organization that highlights certain strategies on accessing low-resource settings, patient engagement, digital learning with AI and big data being a really hot topic, really to make sure that sex-specific insights are also addressed. And, you know, focusing on continuity of care during global emergencies, such as, you know, pandemics that we had with COVID, different crises such as war areas, and reflecting the breadth of context where women’s stroke care is disrupted or under-resourced, and really to allow the knowledge translation and public education around the needs of women-specific stroke, risk recognition, symptom recognition, rehab access, and community readiness for this specific sex and gender disparities. GENESIS specifically has four priorities, one being championing open dialogue, such as one that happened at the World Stroke Congress in Barcelona when we had established the WSO GENESIS main theme session, and we hope to continue that with every Congress. We also have International Women’s Day when we prepare WSO GENESIS webinars, when we share the knowledge updates around this specific topic. And the second priority is building community and mentorship, really establishing the networks for women and gender-diverse individuals in stroke care that like to be mentored and supported when they’re developing certain programs or perhaps research portfolios. And we also build community with like-minded organizations around the world that fall under the Global Stroke Alliance, Future Leaders, European Life After Stroke Forum, as well as the European Stroke Organization, American Heart Association, African Stroke Association, and many others. And the third priority is really to advance inclusive research, making sure that the integration of sex and gender perspectives in stroke are met. And we have a couple of research protocols that are being now developed within GENESIS that will have global impact on really understanding the women’s health insights on stroke promotion, prevention, education, and resources to understand really the environment of not only high-income countries, but low-income countries and medium-income countries in low-resource areas where usually we see these disparities being the highest. And the final priority is to drive policy changes, which is hard but a very important task to advocate for inclusive policies and track gender representations within the space of stroke care at many levels.

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