[The Istituto Superiore di Sanità's focus on gender differences in the prevention and promotion of workers' health]

• DOI: 10.4081/gimle.636
• Publication Date: 2025-03-03T15:20:41Z
• Authors: Anna Ruggieri; Elisabetta Straface; Eugenio Sorrentino

Gender medicine is a multi-faceted field of investigation integrating various aspects of psycho-social and biological sciences but it mainly deals with the impact of the gender on human physiology, pathophysiology, and clinical features of diseases. In Italy, the Decree Law 81/2008 recently introduced the gender issue in the risk assessment at the workplaces. This review briefly describes our current knowledge on gender medicine and on the Italian legislation in risk management. Public or private scientific institutions should be the first to pay attention to the safety of their workers, who are simultaneously subjected to biological, chemical and physical agents. The Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) is beginning a project funded by INAIL, to monitor the hepatitis B, measles, rubella, mumps, pertussis, chickenpox, tetanus vaccines immune coverage in health care workers in Italy.The analysis of the collected data will be disaggregated for men and women and statistically analyzed with respect to the time intervals from vaccination. The results could provide useful elements to implement prevention and health surveillance programs in occupational medicine.