Several ongoing societal and technoscientific developments are changing how chronic health conditions are treated, experienced and researched. These developments include global drug shortages, national plans to rationalise treatment and introduce unified treatment guidelines, digitisation of healthcare, and personalised and precision medicine initiatives. This online seminar explores the changing landscape of health and illness through three gendered chronic diseases characterised by persistent pain: endometriosis, hormonal migraine and fibromyalgia. How do ongoing changes in treatment guidelines and the production of pharmaceuticals shape the future of managing pain? How is the connection between gender and chronic pain conceptualised by patients, clinicians, scientists and public health?

The online seminar introduces and draws on research carried out in the project Gendered Chronic Disease, Embodied Differences and Biomedical Knowledge (GenDis) funded by the Academy of Finland and Kone Foundation and located at Tampere University. The work-in-progress presented in the seminar approaches chronic pain as an embodied, intersectional phenomenon and explores the temporality of chronicity through questions of age. The included talks approach the challenges of managing gendered chronic pain through multiple sites: patient organisations and patient activism, clinics and clinical work, biomedical research on disease mechanisms and possible treatments, clinical trials and public health policy making.

Register here by Thursday 5 May at the latest to receive the Zoom link. The link will be sent on 6 May before the seminar.