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Creating a better future for communities through research

Exploring Women's Involvement in the Health Sector

Echo: Improving Women's Health in Ontario partnered with the Centre for Community Based Research to investigate women's involvement (including women with health issues) in Ontario's health sector. Echo's mission is greater health for women through leadership, productive partnerships and research based action. As Ontario's health system continues to evolve, there is a critical need to mobilize and transfer existing knowledge to women and into care settings and to conduct gender based analysis.

The purpose of this research project is to gain greater insight and understanding of i) the extent and nature of women's current involvement in Ontario health organizations, structures and systems; and ii) the conditions that hinder or enable women's involvement. Our goal is to mobilize research findings to facilitate greater and more meaningful involvement of women in health organizations, systems and structures in Ontario.

Our objectives are to:

  • Characterize women's involvement (the nature, meaningfulness and extent) in health organizations and health systems in Ontario.

  • Identify factors that facilitate or hinder women's involvement in health organizations and systems.

  • Recommend strategies to support an increase in the meaningful involvement of women in Ontario's health sector.

As part of this project, we will be conducting:

  • A literature review to identify key indicators, barriers and facilitating factors of women's involvement in health organizations and systems.

  • A survey of women who reflect the diversity of women in the province, including women who live with health issues, women from immigrant communities, Aboriginal communities, women with disabilities, LBTQ, and Francophone communities. The purpose of this survey is to characterize women's current involvement in health organizations and understand the ways in which they would like to be involved.

  • A survey of health and health-related organizations, including primary care, peer-support, provincial associations and community agencies to characterize how women are currently involved and identify challenges and opportunities for increasing women's involvement.

  • A community forum to discuss survey findings and recommendations for overcoming barriers and increasing meaningful involvement in health systems.

This project is funded by Echo: Improving Women's Health in Ontario, an agency of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

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