The WHRC is recruiting! We are currently seeking new members to join our Belonging, Dignity and Justice Advisory Committee and our multidisciplinary research working groups. Expand the sections below to learn more about why you should get involved! Click here to sign up.
Belonging, Dignity and Justice Advisory Committee
The Women's Health Research Cluster is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusivity best practices into our activities and processes as well as helping our network do the same. In 2020, we formed a Belonging, Dignity and Justice Advisory Committee to review cluster processes and activities and make recommendations about how we can strengthen our EDI practices. This committee meets bi-annually and is comprised of individuals that bring professional and/or personal expertise to the table from a wide variety of backgrounds. The Committee includes students, faculty and individuals from the community who are both WHRC members and non-members. Check out this Committee's Terms of Reference to learn more about their focus, positionality within the Cluster and ability to influence our work.
Want to learn more? Please email womenshealth.res@ubc.ca with any questions you may have.
Interested in joining the committee? Sign up here
Working Groups
To advance our mission to promote, expand and catalyze multidisciplinary research on women's health, we formed three working groups to tackle different challenges related to our research themes. Click the groups below to see what they've accomplished so far and what they're currently working on. If you are interested in joining any of these working groups, or forming a new one, we would love to hear from you. Please email womenshealth.res@ubc.ca.
Perinatal Mental Health Working Group
Co-led by Dr. Anna MacKinnon and Dr. Tina Montreuil, this group seeks to raise awareness about and stimulate new research on perinatal mental health. In 2021, this group organized the first perinatal mental health theme and networking session within the Canadian National Perinatal Research Meeting (CNPRM). As a result, 278 academics were exposed to new research on perinatal mental health and 100 of them engaged more deeply at the networking session. The working group is once again organizing the mental health theme at the 2023 CNPRM. Additionally, this group is co-developing a new open access journal on perinatal mental health and has plans to develop a publicly accessible directory of perinatal mental health experts.
Sex and Gender Based Analysis Working Group
Co-led by Dr. Elizabeth Rideout and Jennifer Williams, the SGBA Working Group aims to provide guidance to faculty and trainees regarding how to appropriately incorporate sex and gender-based considerations into human and animal research. They started our How to SGBA workshop series, which features short case-study talks, panel discussions and breakout conversations to demystify sex and gender-based anlaysis (SGBA) across the entire spectrum of research. So far they've held 3 workshops, garnering 350 registrations and over 4,000 YouTube views in total. Check out these workshops below:
- Sex Cells!
- How to SGBA: Lessons Learned on Incorporating Gender into Research
- How to SGBA: Analyzing and Disseminating Your Data
This year the group is starting a How to SGBA: Ask Me Anything series. These 1 hour events will be held monthly and will allow anyone with a question related to SGBA to connect with one of our experts via zoom to get some guidance. Our pilot AMA event will be held on June 28th, 2023 with WHRC Co-lead and CIHR Sex and Gender Science Chair in Genetics, Dr. Elizabeth Rideout, attending as our expert. Check back here or subscribe to our newsletter for updates. No registrations will be required!
Additionally, this working group is spearheading the SGBA Pathways research project to identify the barriers and facilitators trainees encounter to incorporating SGBA into their work. Results from this project will inform what actions the WHRC can take to bolster SGBA integration into research.
Socioeconomic Status Working Group
Led by Dr. Marina Adshade, this working group raises awareness about the impact that socioeconomic variables like the income, occupation and gender have on women's health. They produced a podcast mini-series on Women's Health Interrupted called Field Trip, which highlights what every women’s health researcher should know about socioeconomic status. Episodes cover diverse topics including intimate partner violence, healthcare of refugees, and health policy. You can listen to all 5 episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.
This group also co-organized a public event called What is the Cost of Care?, which raised awareness about the unpaid labour that is inequitably placed on women in society to care for their families and loved ones. This event was part of the UBC Dialogue series, and was co-organized in partnership with UBC's Alumni Department, Sauder School of Business, School of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Medicine. Over 300 members of the public and academics registered.
Interested in joining one of our working groups? Sign up here
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