Information
June 1996
Centres of Excellence for Women's Health Program
Background
- The Centres of Excellence for Women's Health Program fulfils a commitment to improve the health of Canadian women made by the government in the Red Book, during the 1993 federal election campaign.
- In the health section of Creating Opportunity it was noted that "there is ample evidence that health care systems - in Canada as in other countries - have not given as great attention to women's health as has been given to men's".
- In response to this situation, a commitment was made to "to ensure that women's health receives proper attention...by adding a Centre of Excellence for Women's Health Program aimed at effective and equal treatment of women's health issues in the Canadian health system".
- A 1994 study of women's health research by the Medical Research Council of Canada underscored the serious dearth of research and research funding directed to women's health concerns.
Program Objective
- The overriding objective is to improve the health status of Canadian women by enhancing the health system's understanding of, and responsiveness to, women's health issues.
- The work conducted by the funded Centres will be policy-oriented and aimed, ultimately, at making necessary changes in the health system.
What is a Centre ?
- A centre is a single institution or organization, or a consortium of such institutions or organizations, which brings together the time, knowledge and experience of a wide range of women's health experts and applies it to furthering our understanding of key women's health issues.
- The centres will help define the health status of Canadian women, identify key issues requiring research, investigation and action, and provide analysis, advice and information to government and health organizations.
- The centres have five principal mandates:
- information - development of data and resources on women's health
- knowledge generation - identify key women's health issues and do research on them
- communication - produce publications (ranging from newsletters to technical monographs); convene conferences, training and professional development events using knowledge generated by the centre
- networking - local, national, multi-disciplinary
- policy advice - provide analysis, advice and information to governments, health organizations and non-governmental organizations; help define a women's health research agenda for Canada
- The federally-funded Centres of Excellence for Women's Health are located at universities (Dalhousie University, Université de Montréal, York University), a hospital (British Columbia Women's Hospital and Health Centre) and a community-based health facility (Winnipeg Women's Health Clinic).
- Each of the funded centres is a partnership of academics, researchers, health care providers, community-based women's and women's health organizations.
Budget
- The program has a budget of $ 12.0 million.
- Each Centre may receive funding for up to 6 years - over the period 1996-97 to 2001- 02.
- Each centre will receive approximately $ 2.0 million over the six-year period, with the exact amount to be negotiated based on annual workplans submitted by the centre.
- Candidates were not required to demonstrate the capacity to generate additional resources but it is expected that the centres will be successful in securing funding from other research granting programs.
How the Centres were Selected
- The Centres were selected through a two-stage selection process.
- The Program Policies and Guidelines documentation was issued in November 1995 along with a call for letters of intent to bid. From the twenty-five applicants at this stage, thirteen were selected to move on to stage II of the process, the detailed application stage.
- The thirteen stage II candidates submitted detailed proposals in accordance with application requirements. These proposals were reviewed internally by Health Canada, and were assessed by an eight-person external review panel comprised of individuals representing research, policy and community development perspectives. The external review panel included experts from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
- Particular emphasis during the review process was placed on the knowledge generation and policy advice capacity demonstrated by each of the candidates.
- The candidates were assessed as well on their potential to work in all five of the mandated areas, by the strength and contribution of the mix of researchers and the community-academic partnerships, and by the potential to contribute to the Centres of Excellence for Women's Health program objective.
- A further consideration was the mix of subject areas proposed by the various applicants.
Women's Health Framework
- The work of the centres will be guided by a Women's Health Framework produced by Health Canada.
- The Framework promotes the use of a health determinants approach, emphasizes the concept of gender as an important variable in health, draws attention to the need for a critique of the health system's traditional view of women and the implications for practice and service provision; identifies the need for change in our approach to women's health bearing in mind the health system is undergoing rapid change; points our some of the issues related to the status of women in the formal and informal health systems; and urges greater responsiveness of policy-makers at all levels to the health concerns of women.
The Canadian Women's Health Network
- The Canadian Women's Health Network (CWHN) is a national voluntary organization established in 1993 to share information, resources and strategies to improve women's health.
- The CWHN has been asked to take on the task of national co-ordination of the networking component of the Centres program. The CWHN will work with the funded centres and other interested organizations and individuals at the national, regional and community level to build links and support the flow of women's health information across all strata and sectors.
- The CWHN will be funded through the Centres of Excellence for Women's Health Program.
National Advisory Group
- A National Advisory Group with representation from the funded Centres, major research granting programs, individuals from the women's health community and Health Canada will be named.
- The National Advisory Group will have three main functions:
- assist with the develop, review and assessment of the workplans and work of the funded centres;
- provide advice on the evaluation of the centres program;
- review and assess progress in the field of women's health research.
|
