Working Groups

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 2024 CNPRM. Additionally, this group is co-developing a new open access journal on perinatal mental health and is writing a position paper to document 

The PMH working group is currently open to accepting new members. For more information on how to get involved, contact the WHRC's Director of Operations Katherine Moore.   

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.

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

Last year the group launched a How to SGBA: Ask Me Anything series. These 1 hour events were held monthly and allowed anyone with a question related to SGBA to connect with one of our experts via zoom to get some guidance. This event was held with WHRC Co-lead and CIHR Sex and Gender Science Chair in Genetics, Dr. Elizabeth Rideout. 

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.