Tag Archive for: abortion care

Women’s Health Interrupted Podcast: Season 2 Recap

Authors: Edidiong Daniel, BSc. Environmental Toxicology | WHRC Social Media Committee Member | Editor: Romina Garcia de leon Reviewer: Bonnie Lee

Published: July 19th, 2024

We’ve come to the end of Season 2 of the Women’s Health Interrupted Podcast! – a podcast that centers on women’s health across these four themes: general health and wellness, brain health, socio-cultural determinants of health as well as politics, policy, and advocacy. The second season of the Women’s Health Interrupted Podcast was hosted by UBC’s Masters of Journalism students, Chhavi Mehra and Sarah Williscraft, and featured guests across various institutions and fields. All episodes are available on any major podcast streaming platform. If you haven’t tuned in yet, here’s a quick recap!

Season 2 kicked off with Dr. Lori Brotto, a professor in the UBC Department of Gynecology, a registered psychologist in Vancouver, and Executive Director of the Women’s Health Research Institute of BC, discussing Cultivating Female Sexual Desire through Mindfulness. Dr. Brotto shared the role of mindfulness and environmental influence in cultivating female sexual desires and discussed the orgasm gap and contributing factors, while also debunking some myths surrounding female sexuality.

Next, we had Dr. Najah Adreak, a clinical researcher and an advocate for cardiovascular health and treatment, especially for underserved women patients, for episode two: Why are Women’s Cardiovascular Concerns Often Downplayed? Dr. Adreak discussed why women’s cardiovascular health is often downplayed and also shed light on the knowledge gaps in women’s cardiovascular health, the differences between male and female hearts, how hormonal changes and social determinants of health can affect women’s heart health long-term, and the role of physicians in filling the knowledge gaps in female cardiovascular health.

In the third episode: All You Need to Know about Gynecological Cancer, co-hosts of the Gynecologic Oncology Sharing Hub (GOSH) podcast Nicole Keay and Stephanie Lam told us everything we should know about gynecological cancer, explaining how gynecological cancer differs from other forms of cancer and the importance of researching these cancers as separate entities. Nicole and Stephanie also shared new research tools for gynecological cancer such as the Opportunistic Salpingectomy for prevention strategy and the Proactive Molecular Risk Classifier for Endometrial Cancer (ProMisE) for endometrial cancer diagnosis.

Dr. Lindsay Larios, assistant professor at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Social Work, joined us to discuss Abortion Rights with Precarious Immigration Status, highlighting the challenges in accessing abortion and general reproductive care as immigrants in Canada. Dr. Larios explained how access to reproductive care for pregnant immigrants differs based on class, race, ethnicity, and other socioeconomic factors, the difference between private and public health insurance for immigrants, the importance of including reproductive rights and justice framework in Canada’s immigration system, and reforms and repairs that need to happen.

For episode 5: Housing and Health Barriers Faced by 2SLGBTQ+ Youth, Dr. Alex Abramovich, an Independent Scientist with the Institute of Mental Health Policy Research at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, took us through the current state of housing access for 2SLGBTQ+ Youths in Canada. Dr. Abramovich laid out some factors that impact access to housing for 2SLGBTQ+ youths in Canada and shared some useful resources for 2SLGBTQ+ youths experiencing homelessness. 

PhD student, Amanda Namchuk, and recent B.Sc. in Biology graduate, Tallinn Splinter, came on the podcast to discuss the Exclusion of Women from health Research: Then and Now. Amanda and Tallinn helped differentiate between sex and gender and addressed the need for sex and gender-based research using the difference in the breakdown of Tylenol in men and women, among others, as a clear case study. They also explained how the exclusion of women in research impacts historically underserved communities and the role of big institutions like the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and journals in ensuring sex and gender are properly incorporated in scientific research.

Featuring Dr. Ann-Marie de Lange from the University of Oxford, and Dr. Claudia Barth, biologist and cofounder of the Women’s NeuroNetwork, we went deep into the brain for episodes 7 and 8. Dr. Ann-Marie de Lange discussed some common misconceptions about how pregnancy affects the brain, highlighted some changes that happen to the brain during pregnancy and after birth, and shared what women can do to improve their brain health for episode 7: Mommy Brain: It’s Not Just in Your Head. In episode 8: How Does Menopause Affect the Brain, Dr. Barth shed light on some hormonal changes that happen to the brain during menopause, menopausal symptoms, the impact of menopause on mental health and neurological disorders, and the need to educate women and men on menopause.

Dr. Debra Anderson, Dean of the Faculty of Health at the University of Technology Sydney, explained how lifestyle factors and health behaviors such as smoking, exercise, and nutrition can impact quality of life in the ninth episode: This is How You Can Improve Your Quality of Life. Dr. Anderson also stressed the importance of looking at women as a whole and also shared a shocking revelation on how big a role calcium plays in reducing premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

For episode ten: Domperidone for Low Milk Supply: Is it Safe? we were joined by Dr. Janet Currie, a social worker and the founder and director of Focus Consultants, and Dr. Suzanne Hetzel Campbell, a professor at UBC School of Nursing, to discuss the use of domperidone, a drug approved to treat stomach problems in Canada, in treating low milk supply in breastfeeding mothers. Dr. Currie and Dr. Campbell mentioned some factors that have contributed to the dramatic increase in domperidone use, safety concerns, and what Health Canada can do to better regulate the safe and effective use of off-label drugs like domperidone.

Finally, we had Kirann Mann, a first-year obstetrics and gynecology resident at McMaster University, for our eleventh episode on Breaking the Stigma Around Pelvic Floor Dysfunction. Kirann explained the pelvic floor, what it does, and the importance of maintaining pelvic floor health, and listed some symptoms of a weak pelvic floor and stressors in one’s life that impact pelvic floor health. Kirann also explained how socioeconomic factors like socioeconomic status, education level, and racial and ethnic background can create disparities in gaps and knowledge, and shed light on how the pelvic floor awareness campaign builds community surrounding pelvic floor health.

What an incredible journey Season 2 took us on. The Cluster is so grateful to all the wonderful experts that took the time to sit down with us and discuss these timely women’s health topics with us. We hope you were able to learn a new thing or two from all the different disciplines and perspectives featured throughout Season 2. All episodes and corresponding resources can be found on our website. We hope you join us for Season 3. Stay tuned!

 

 

How Can Canada Improve Access to Abortion Care?

Author: Martha Paynter, RN PhD, Assistant Professor in The Faculty of Nursing at the University of New Brunswick

Authors/Editors: Romina Garcia de leon, Shayda Swann (Blog Co-coordinators).

Published: March 24, 2023

As an abortion care provider in Canada, I feel deep solidarity with colleagues south of the border and terror for their patients after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that the U.S. Constitution afforded protection to the right to abortion. Individual states now may ban abortion outright — and several already have.

Abortion care affirms the dignity and autonomy of patients and translates into not only physical and mental health but also opportunity for education, employment, safety from violence, and parenting wanted children.

Providers and policymakers in Canada can and must respond to U.S. abortion bans by expanding access to care here.

In Canada, abortion is completely decriminalized and, as health care, is no more governed by criminal law than knee surgery or intravenous antibiotics. There are no legal limits on gestational age,  mandatory waiting periods, or  requirements that youth seek parental consent.

Abortion in Canada is publicly funded like most medical services, with a few exceptions. And since 2017, all primary care providers, including family physicians and nurse practitioners, have been authorized (except in Québec) to prescribe mifepristone for medication abortion, which is drug-induced rather than surgical.

Because abortion case is not governed by law in Canada, politicians cannot lobby for reforms to limit access. There is no law that providers must tiptoe around to avoid prosecution.

In the past seven years, logistical access to abortion in Canada has improved significantly:

Even COVID-19 protections resulted in care expansion: as providers became more familiar with telemedicine, many felt comfortable moving to “no touch” or “low touch” medication abortion prescribing, without requiring blood work or ultrasound.

Because pandemic inter-provincial travel restrictions limited the ability to refer patients elsewhere if they were past local gestational age caps, hospitals in several provinces made the necessary infrastructural and training adjustments to extend the gestational ages to which they would provide care.

But serious limits on abortion access in Canada remain. This is a huge country, and people living in rural, remote and underserved areas face enormous travel burdens to access care.

These burdens are greatest for people facing poverty, intimate partner violence and racism from the health-care system. And access challenges may be greater if we suddenly see an influx of demand from U.S. patients.

Because health care is administered at the provincial/territorial level, access and medical practices among the provinces/territories vary widely, and unjustly. This is the case for all kinds of health care — but abortion is basic and common care, not neurosurgery.

Consider how there are 49 (surgical) abortion sites in Québec — by far the highest number of access points — but Québec has the lowest rate of uptake of abortion medication because of rigid requirements about prescribing authority. Meanwhile, although there is only one surgical abortion site in P.E.I., where more than half of abortions are through medication.

In Newfoundland, 95 per cent of (publicly funded) surgical abortion takes place at the freestanding family practice clinic, Athena. Yet New Brunswick has kept a perverse piece of legislation on the books for decades, 84-20 Schedule 2 a.1 of the Medical Services Payment Act, denying public insurance for surgical abortion outside of a hospital building.

One in three people in Canada with a uterus will have an abortion in their lifetime. The arrangements for care should not be so convoluted and unequal.

There will undoubtedly be escalating rhetoric from anti-choice politicians in the wake of the fall of Roe. Now is the time to leap forward in terms of access. Health-care providers, policymakers, activists and everyone in Canada can channel our horror into meaningful and specific actions to enthusiastically expand abortion services.

  1. We need to ensure all medical and nursing schools include robust abortion components in their curricula to increase provider knowledge, competence and confidence with abortion care and reduce geographic disparities.
  2. Nurse practitioners and midwives should be authorized not only to prescribe abortion medication but to perform aspiration (surgical) abortion. Québec must get on board with welcoming primary care providers as medication abortion prescribers.
  3. We should nurture abortion provider networks for mentorship and support, to improve confident uptake of no-touch mifepristone prescribing and availability of abortion in rural, remote and underserved communities.
  4. We must have universal coverage for contraception for everyone, and explore offering contraception and mifepristone over the counter, as we do with Plan B.
  5. We must make sure every person understands how abortion care works here, normalize it as a health service, and resist any attempt to bind it up in a law that could someday be altered or taken away.

Poverty, stigma, racism and gender violence are barriers to abortion in Canada. If we are worried about threats to access, these are what we need to fight.

This article was originally published on Impact Ethics and has been republished here with permission from the author.