C4 Everything You Need to Know About Women's Health

Dr Nighat Arif, resident doctor on BBC Breakfast and ITV’s This Morning, is on a mission to bring women’s health to the forefront. She talks to author and behaviour and data scientist, Pragya Agarwal (Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotions).  Bring your daughters, mothers, partners, sisters and friends and join this informative and empowering conversation about the key stages in every woman’s life.

Celebrated GP Dr Nighat Arif – the resident doctor on BBC Breakfast and ITV’s This Morning – is on a mission to women’s health to the forefront. Her informative, open and reassuring talk, based on her book The Knowledge: your guide to female health, from menstruation to the menopause, will help us all better understand each of the three key stages of a woman’s life: the puberty years, the fertility years and the peri/menopausal years.

Every step of the way, Dr Nighat will help you get to know the female body by explaining what is normal, what to expect, how to care for yourself and when to seek help. This book tackles many important topics: from the help available for people with conditions like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome to the symptoms of heart disease to look out for in women.

The Knowledge encompasses all experiences, including the perspectives of women of colour, people of all abilities and cultures, and the transgender community to ensure that all groups affected by female health concerns are a part of vital conversations.

Dr Nighat Arif is a GP specialising in women's health, family planning and menopause care, with over 15 years of experience working in the NHS. She has also run her own private women’s health clinic for six years. Nighat is the resident doctor on BBC Breakfast and ITV’s This Morning, and is a radio presenter for BBC Three Counties. Nighat is an ambassador for the women’s charity Wellbeing of Women, and is a member of the UN-backed Team Halo initiative. She received the Point of Light Prime Minister’s Award for her exceptional service to women’s health, and was also the recipient of the 2023 Honorary SHE Award for her outstanding work in women’s health. Her new book The Knowledge: your guide to female health - from menstruation to the menopause, is for women all of ages. Nighat is a mum to three boys, and lives in Buckinghamshire.

Professor Pragya Agarwal is a geospatial and behavioural data scientist, Visiting Professor of Social Inequities at Loughborough University, and founder of research think-tank ‘The 50 Percent Project’. Following a PhD from the University of Nottingham, Pragya held the prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship and has held senior academic positions and visiting fellowships around the globe including University College London (UK), University of Temuco (Chile), University of California Santa Barbara (USA) and Johns Hopkins University (USA). Pragya is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Royal Geographic Society in the United Kingdom.

Her research and writing have been funded by the British Academy, Royal Society, European Commission, and Society of Authors. Pragya was awarded a Crucible fellowship by NESTA for ‘innovative interdisciplinary research’, and a Transmission Prize in 2022 for ‘making big complex scientific ideas accessible’. She has also been nominated as one of 50 people creating change in the ‘India-UK’ corridor, and one of 100 leading women in social enterprise in the UK. She has recently been awarded the Eccles Centre Fellowship by the British Library, and a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship to the USA.

Pragya is the author of a number of scholarly articles and various invited book chapters. Her publications are on reading lists of leading academic courses across the world. Her books include Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias (Bloomsbury, 2020), Wish We Knew What To Say: Talking With Children about Race (Dialogue Books, 2020), and (M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman (Canongate, 2021). Her first book for children, Standing up to Racism, was shortlisted for the Progressive Preschool award. Her latest book, Hysterical: Exploding the myth of gendered emotions was one of Waterstones’ 'best non-fiction of September 2022' and i paper’s 'best non-fiction of 2022'. Pragya has also written for the Guardian, New Scientist, Scientific American, Prospect, and Psychology Today.

Pragya works as a consultant and speaker with organisations around the world, including universities, corporate and non-profits. She is a two-time TEDx speaker, a TEDx Woman organiser, and makes regular expert appearances on many international shows such as NPR Short Wave, ABC Q&A, BBC Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4 The Spark, and Darren Brown’s podcast The Bigoted Brain. She has also spoken at Hay Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Museum of Science in Boston, Edinburgh Literature festival, Emirates Literature Festival, and Northern Ireland Science Festival. In 2023, she has been invited to speak at the Sydney Opera House, Bradford Literary Festival, How The Light Gets In, and Tate St Ives, amongst others.

More information on Pragya’s writing can be found on her Twitter and Instagram: @drpragyaagarwal and her website drpragyaagarwal.com