Resources

The book ‘The Myth of Osteoporosis’ by Gilian Sanson has been newly revised. According to the author’s website, the book “reveals that osteoporosis is an even more controversial condition in 2011 – still trumpeted by drug companies, front-line advocacy groups and clinicians as a silent but deadly disease that stands to destroy the lives of tens of millions of postmenopausal women – but with the market further expanded to include those with osteopenia or low bone density, resulting in untold numbers now taking potent osteoporosis drugs. The drugs offer minimal (if any) benefit amidst ever-increasing evidence for serious harm, but they continue to be widely prescribed while massive profits roll in for the companies that produce them.”

Learn more about trauma-informed approaches and practices in Canada with this newly developed online tool. It features an overview of four topics related to “trauma-informed” approaches when working with women with mental health and substance use concerns, along with highlights of promising practices, policy challenges . . . and thoughts of where to go next.  Under each of the four topics you’ll find:

• examples of trauma informed work in action,
• links to recommended readings,
• links to  curricula and training resources, and web resources,
• links to webcasts on the topics

A PDF version is also available for download.

The tool is based on research completed in 2010 with service providers and health system planners from across Canada, funded by Health Canada’s Women’s Health Contribution Program.  The developers of the tool at the British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health are working on several other current projects on trauma-informed practice, and would appreciate any feedback people have on the material in the tool.  Please contact Tina Talbot at ctalbot@cw.bc.ca

Find the online tool on Coalescing on Women and Substance Use website.

New from the Environmental Workig Group:

Washington, D.C. – Consumers can trust a slim 20 percent of the beach and sport sunscreens assessed for the 2011 sun season, according to Environmental Working Group’s survey of over 1,700 sun products.

In the wild west of sunscreens, sun-seekers are still faced with shelves filled with problematic ingredients, unsubstantiated marketing claims and lack-luster protection – three out of five sunscreens offer inadequate UVA protection.

Sort through the sunscreen noise -- click here for EWG's 2011 Sunscreen Guide.

Three new factsheets are available online from the Prevention Institute.

Safety and preventing violence play a critical role in promoting healthy eating, physical activity, mental health outcomes and equity. No matter what area of public health your work focuses on, including a violence prevention lens will ultimately boost outcomes and increase health across communities.

Download the fact sheets on their website :Violence and Chronic Illness, Violence and Learning, and Violence and Mental Illness and Poor Learning

Since EWG launched Skin Deep in 2004, they’ve seen nearly 250 million searches. Now Skin Deep has a new look and feel, as well as some great new features that EWG has developed in response to user feedback:
Easier-to-use search and navigation tools
More tips for safer products
Comprehensive and easy-to-use FAQs
User's guide for first time searchers

The EWG is a founding member of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

EWG also relies on donor support. Click here for donor information.      

The YWCA has released two valuable new reports this year:

Digital Conversations about Women, Gender and Violence in Social and New Media
YWCA Canada Brief to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women: Study of the impact of social media and new communications technologies on violence against women and girls.

Educated, Employed and Equal
The Economic Prosperity Case for National Child Care
This new report discusses how women’s advances in the work force and education over the last three decades demonstrate an unstoppable movement toward equality and mark a quiet revolution in women’s lives. The gender gap has closed in employment numbers and reversed in education without a corresponding social policy response. Canada needs early learning and child care services, not a social policy gap that is decades behind reality.

The New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women has launched a Women’s History Map, an online listing of sites and landmarks of importance to the history of women in New Brunswick. 

The website lists over 125 monuments, statues, residences, factories, schools, parks, gravestones and even sites where buildings once stood. 

The Advisory Council Chairperson Elsie Hambrook said the Council wanted to include physical representations of where events occurred related to women’s rights, where females first broke into traditionally male-dominated fields, where women’s groups acted for change, where adventure-seekers and creative minds left their stamp, and where strong and spirited women made herstory in the shadows, raising children, working for pay, running businesses and volunteering in their communities.

Ms. Hambrook said the History Map grew out of the massive response to an invitation of the Advisory Council in the summer of 2010 to send in local history landmarks that relate to women in the province.

The History Map can be searched by county, by name of a person or group and by keywords. It is found at www.nbwomenshistory.ca

Jane Ussher (Reproductive and Sexual Mental Health research team co-leader at Centre for the Study of Gender, Social Inequities and Mental Health) releases her new book March 25th, 2011.

The Madness of Women: Myth and Experience explores a number of important, though often unasked questions. Why are women more likely to be diagnosed as mad than men? If madness is a gendered label, as many feminist critics would argue, how can we better understand and explain women's prolonged misery and distress? Can we prevent or treat this distress in a way that doesn't pathologize women?
 
Jane Ussher presents a critical multifactorial analysis of women's madness that both addresses the notion that madness is a myth, and acknowledges the reality and causes of women's distress. Topics include:

• The genealogy of women’s madness
• Incarceration of difficult or deviant women
• Regulation through treatment
• Deconstructing depression, PMS and borderline personality disorder
• Madness as a reasonable response to objectification and sexual violence
• Women’s narratives of resistance 

Drawing on academic and clinical experience, including case studies and in-depth interviews, as well as on the now extensive critical literature in the field of mental health, Ussher reveals the ways in which medicine, psychology, and drug company advertising combine to position women as ‘mad’. Rejecting this process of pathologisation, she posits women's distress may be a reasonable response to the conditions of their lives. Exploring the construction and lived experience of women’s madness, as well as survival and resistance, the implications of this research for women are vast.

The POWER Study Reproductive & Gynaecological Health chapter is now available for download.

This chapter provides critical information on patterns of disparities in care for women in Ontario that can be used to target improvement interventions. Care provided for reproductive and gynaecological health issues is deeply imbedded in social and cultural norms and may vary over time, socioeconomic status, across cultures and regionally. Because of the central role that pregnancy and childbirth plays in the lives of many women a substantial proportion of this chapter deals with indicators related to prenatal care, the processes and consequences of childbirth and postpartum care and outcomes. The remaining sections of the chapter report on abortion, hysterectomy for benign conditions and sexually transmitted infection rates.

To download a copy of the full chapter or the highlights document, visit POWER Study.

Women and Health Care Reform is distributing a number of terrific informational booklets based on their research to organizations and individuals interested in helping to fan them out to readers across Canada. We’ll even pay the postage! All you have to do is tell us how many of each publication you would like (min. 10). Titles include: Wait Times, Just the Facts Ma’am, Health Care Reform & Women and Home Care. There are also several titles in French. Professors find the materials to be useful teaching tools, and NGOs circulate them to their members. Get them while you can! Fill out and return the order form below by email, fax or mail. For more information, please email data@cwhn.ca.

To view the publications, visit Women and Health Care Reform.