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Article History

Received: 11 November 2025

Accepted: 12 January 2026

First Online: 17 February 2026

Declarations

:

: The study received approval from the Committee for Ethical and Responsible Conduct of Research (CECRI, i3S; Ref. 5/CECRI/2025). All participants received written and verbal information about the purpose and procedures of the study and provided informed consent prior to participation, including consent for audio recording and anonymized use of quotations. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and followed all applicable institutional and national ethical standards for research involving human participants.

: As researchers, we acknowledge that our social, professional, and cultural positions actively shaped both the data generation process and the interpretative lens through which the analysis was conducted. Our team is composed of women with diverse disciplinary and professional backgrounds, including nursing, psychology, and genetic counselling, spanning different academic levels, from clinicians and educators to senior professors, which brought multiple layers of insight and experience to the study. Our distinct cultural and professional contexts, shaped by our backgrounds in Portugal, Cuba, and the United States, also informed how we understood and engaged with the field of genomic healthcare. Reflecting on our positionality was not an attempt to minimize subjectivity but to acknowledge it as an integral part of meaning-making. We recognize that our perspectives, rooted in nursing, psychology, and genetic counselling, co-constructed the analytic narrative presented in this paper. Through continuous reflexive dialogue, we sought to make these influences explicit and to enhance the transparency and depth of our interpretative engagement.

: The authors declare no competing interests.