Women’s Health Research Network

Year 2005

Type Health of Population Networks
Host institution Provincial Health Services Authority

While issues related to the health of women and girls are investigated by researchers across many disciplines and areas, the Women’s Health Research Network (WHRN) is specifically dedicated to expanding focussed women’s health research that will increase the understanding of and capacity for sex and gender-based analyses and for integrating women’s health concerns into other areas of health research.

Co-Leaders:

Cecilia Benoit, PhD
University of Victoria
Lorraine Greaves, PhD
University of Victoria/BC Women's Hospital
Olena Hankivsky, PhD
Simon Fraser University
Nancy Poole, MA
BC Centre of Excellence for Women's Health

Award term completed in 2010.

While issues related to the health of women and girls are investigated by researchers across many disciplines and areas, the Women’s Health Research Network is specifically dedicated to expanding focussed women’s health research that will increase the understanding of and capacity for sex and gender-based analyses and for integrating women’s health concerns into other areas of health research. With an inclusive, multisectoral and multidisciplinary approach to research, the network will bring forward and encourage brokerage of knowledge regarding the health of girls and women in BC.

The Women’s Health Research Network is a catalyst for bringing together innovative groupings of researchers and research collaborations drawn from academic, health service, policy and community settings that will lead the generation, application and mainstreaming of new knowledge in gender and women’s health.

The specific goals of the network include:

To foster authentic and inclusive cross-sectoral linkages that will enable increased women's research activity on girls’ and women’s health in British Columbia;
To consolidate and further develop a program of research that crosses all pillars of health research plus policy research, supported by a variety of activities and information technologies;
To increase awareness of completed, current, and future research projects and programs focused on women’s health;
To improve the understanding and integration of sex, gender and other determinants into research activity in other networks;
To develop effective models for the brokerage of knowledge about sex differences and gender influences into practice and policy;
To deliver interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral training that will increase capacity among community based researchers, students and other health researchers to engage in a full range of women’s health research;
To develop research partnerships nationally and internationally as a way of raising the profile of women’s health research in BC and attracting increased research funding to the province