News and Issues

News from ECHO today.... 
Women's health being supported through strategic research grants

In 2007, the Ontario government established Echo: Improving Women’s Health in Ontario demonstrating its commitment to enhance the province’s focus on women’s health equity.

Since opening officially in 2009, Echo has worked tirelessly to fulfil its mandate to be the focal point and catalyst for women’s health at the provincial level and to promote equity and improved health for women by working in collaborative partnerships with the health system, communities, researchers and policy-makers. 

Some Winnipeg students are mounting a national “59 Cents Campaign” to fight the federal cuts in funding for refugee health care. They have released this video asking all Canadians to send $.59 to Stephen Harper (what it would cost each person in the country to keep the refugee health program running).

Starting in July, Citizenship and Immigration Canada will stop paying for supplemental health benefits for refugees during their first year here. After the cuts were announced, health-care professionals rallied in protest across Canada.

Read about the campaign: Send 59 cents to PM (Winnipeg Free Press)

Our Bodies, Our Votes is a new US education campaign by Our Bodies Ourselves that urges everyone to use their political power to thwart attacks on women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health services.

According to Our Bodies, over the past couple of years US lawmakers have so severely restricted contraception and reproductive health services that a woman’s access to basic health care in the United States is not guaranteed.

Visit OurBodiesOurVotes.com to learn more.

Judith Timson wrote an article in the Globe and Mail this week on the rise in fertility and the pressure on women to have their babies when young.

Timson quotes CWHN’s Executive Director Anne Rochon Ford in the article, which also looks at the fact that there is a growing body of literature on how environmental hazards affect the fertility of both women and men.

Read Baby before salary? That might not be a bad idea.

The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research has a new position statement on the language of peri-menopause and menopause.

Among health care providers, consumers, and media, confusing use of terminology exists relating to women’s midlife reproductive transition (such as “menopause,” “perimenopause,” “the change,” “menopausal transition”). In the midst of this confusion, this important and sometimes symptomatic transition may be lost, or conflated with the end of reproductive-related life.

As a Society that listens to and aims to facilitate women’s understanding of, and self-advocacy about, their own health, Society for Menstrual Cycle Research claims what bell hooks has called  the “privileged act of naming,” because they believe that presently midlife naming “obscure(s) what is really taking place” (Ms. Magazine, July 1992; 3:80-2). Their aim here is not to criticize women’s language, nor to tell women how to describe what they are experiencing but rather to alert both women and society to the ambiguities and potential miscommunications in the current language.

They want to promote the use of clearer terminology in the interest of reducing confusion and improving midlife women’s quality of life, as well as access, if desired or needed, to appropriate health care.

Download Naming Women’s Midlife Reproductive Transition.

Here’s the re:Cycling blog post about the project, written by Jerilynn Prior of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.

The Federal-Provincial-Territorial (FPT) Ministers Responsible for the Status of Women gathered in Halifax on May 2 and 3, 2012. The annual meeting was co-chaired by the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Canada's Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women, and the Honourable Marilyn More, Minister responsible for the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

The meeting provided a valuable opportunity for Ministers to exchange insights and discuss developments in the priority areas of improving women's economic security, promoting women's leadership and ending violence against women, each with an ongoing focus on Aboriginal women.

Read their whole statement.

The international health and science community lost a bright light this week with the death of Dr. Rosalie Bertell. She was 83 years old.

Dr. Bertell was well known for her work as a scientist, environmental activist and international expert on radiation’s effect on our health.

She was very influential in environmental health research, with her work on the effects of disasters such as the Union Carbide gas leak disaster in Bhopal, India in 1984 and the nuclear power plant meltdown in Chernobyl in 1986.

Dr. Bertell was the first Director of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, founded in Toronto in 1984.

Read the tribute to her by Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri on Global Research.ca.

Eco-Journal, the newsletter of the Environmental Health Association of Quebec, has posted their latest issue online.

The mission of the Environmental Health Association of Québec (EHAQ) is the protection of the environment and human health directed towards the individual and the collective by creating awareness, support and education of the population on the protection of the environment from toxic products and pesticides. 

Contents include:

The Recognition and Accommodation for Environmental Sensitivities: A Global and Canadian View

Imagine if this happened to you –how one person’s life has been affected by Multiple Chemical Sensitivity/Environmental Sensitivity

Detoxification: A Naturopathic Perspective

How to Make Your Bedroom a Safe Haven

Read the latest Eco-Journal.

The latest recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force on hormone therapy, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, says that women who are past menopause and healthy should not take hormones to prevent dementia, bone fractures or heart disease.

Read the story in the Washington Post: New study sounds warning on hormone replacement therapy

Our Bodies, our Blog comments on this story this week: Hormone Therapy and Chronic Disease Prevention

Media Release – For Immediate Release
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 

Civil society groups and medical professionals applaud recognition of Dr. Nancy Olivieri. The courageous researcher has been honoured and vindicated by an honorary degree from Dalhousie University

OTTAWA — Today civil society organizations and medical colleagues applaud the recognition of Dr. Nancy Olivieri by Dalhousie University's Faculty of Medicine “for taking a courageous stand that helped bring issues of medical ethics to the forefront of our collective consciousness, and for her national and international research in blood disorders.” Dalhousie awarded Olivieri an honorary doctorate of lawshonoris causa, at the May 25, 2012 Convocation in Halifax. Olivieri was lauded as “a woman who certainly has the courage of her convictions, a courage that has been well-tested.”

See video of presentation and acceptance speech.  

Olivieri’s research identified unexpected risks associated with deferiprone, a pharmaceutical drug manufactured by Apotex Inc. In spite of repeated threats of legal action by Apotex not to do so, Dr. Olivieri disclosed the risks to her patients, and published her findings in scientific journals so that other physicians could learn of these risks – thus upholding established medical ethics.

Kathleen Connors, Chair of the Board of the Canadian Health Coalition said “This is the highest honour that a university can bestow, and it reflects the high regard for Dr. Oliveri’s research and her battle to respect medical ethics in the face of commercial pressures.”