The Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute has participated in the creation of the “Recommendations for inclusive communication in health research” guide, coordinated by the Health Quality and Assessment Agency of Catalonia (AQUAS) with the participation of nine research institutions in Catalonia. This guide seeks to encourage the inclusion of language that promotes the visibility, equality and representativeness of all people and to avoid situations in which the language may contain lexical terms or forms that make them feel invisible or discriminated.

The guide includes recommendations for written, oral and visual communication. It will be a support tool for inclusive communication in health research institutions, complementary to their official language guides and style manuals.

Inclusive communication is essential to ensure that all people feel represented and valued. While recognizing this need, the guide includes examples and strategies of preferred uses and non-recommended uses, to show their practical application and with the intention of providing resources, promoting awareness and contributing to the full, respectful and non-discriminatory inclusion of any group. For this reason, the document does not only include examples of gender treatment, but also of other diversities, such as the communicative treatment of disabilities, diseases and cultural groups.

At the same time, an infographic with the key messages has also been presented in order to offer a more accessible resource. Both documents are addressed to both the scientific and administrative team of these institutions, as well as their managers, research system staff, journalists and other interested groups, in order to offer visual and simple and direct recommendations to explain and disseminate research in an inclusive way, as well as specific advice in different formats.

These publications have been prepared in the framework of the Hypatia Community, which works for the updating of management policies and practices, the elimination of unconscious bias, the promotion of cultural change and the incorporation of the sex and gender perspective in research. Specifically for this initiative, a working group has been created coordinated by AQUAS and integrated by professionals from the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute (IJC), the Girona Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBGI), the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (IMIM), the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute (IRB Barcelona), the Lleida Biomedical Research Institute (IRB Lleida), the Sant Pau Research Institute (IIB- Sant Pau), the Institute of Research and Innovation Parc Taulí (I3PT) and the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO). The guide has also had the linguistic advice of the Linguistic Planning Service of the Catalan Department of Health.