Ottawa-based organization's pre-budget submission takes aim at women's health funding

Yahoo

2 days ago

An Ottawa-based organization is urging the federal government to allocate millions of dollars in Budget 2025 to address gaps and misinformation in women's health, saying the money will advance women's health care across the country.
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) is a national organization dedicated to advancing women's health and advocating for better health-care policies across the country.
In its pre-budget submission, the organization outlined five key recommendations for government officials to consider while drafting Budget 2025, which is expected to drop in the fall.
One of those recommendations is a $20 million investment to close data gaps in women's health by creating a National Women's Health Data Dashboard and improve data collection strategies.
The SOGC says the dashboard, which should be a standardized and disaggregated database, will provide meaningful insights into key women's health indicators. This includes data on maternal mortality and morbidity, stillbirth and perinatal loss, menopause and endometriosis.
This will help patients make informed decisions about their health and also allow health-care providers to provide more responsive, equitable and cost-effective care, the SOGC added.
The organization also said the move will also have economic benefits because incomplete data leads to lost productivity and greater costs to the health-care system. Patients often have to foot hefty bills from unnecessary health-care costs.
Currently, provinces and territories are responsible for collecting this data and practices may vary widely.
'The federal government must take a leadership role in co-ordinating and standardizing this data collection, as approaches to health data collection across provinces and territories vary widely. Only national leadership can ensure consistency, comparability and the quality needed to build a reliable, actionable and nationally-focused database and dashboard,' the pre-budget submission read.
'Without co-ordinated, federally driven health data infrastructure, Canada will continue to miss emerging health trends, fall short in reducing system costs and fail to support women whose pain and illness limit their ability to fully participate in the economy.'
The recommendation comes after Prime Minister Mark Carney made several promises to protect women's rights in Canada throughout his federal election campaign earlier this year.
This includes investments to increase data collection to 'help address women's health gaps in Canada,' as well as investments into under-researched areas like postpartum maternal health.
But the platform did not provide specific details about how much money will be allocated to this initiative.
'Under a Liberal government, women's rights in Canada will never be compromised. We will protect these rights, and fight for true equity for women — in health, in the workplace, and in their access to fundamental rights,' the 2025 Liberal Party federal election platform reads.
The Liberal Party of Canada also pledged to invest into women's sexual and reproductive health care and health research, including those who identify as 2SLGBTQI+.
Women's health still under-researched, underfunded
Advocates have been talking about the lack of awareness and knowledge around women's health for years, saying it is a result of historical gender inequality in the research process.
Research published in April this year found that the percentage of research abstracts mentioning sex, gender and LGBTQ2S+ populations doubled or quadrupled from 2020 to 2023 but remained at under 10 per cent of overall funded research.
The number of female-specific research didn't change much between 2020 to 2023 — female-specific research only made up about seven per cent of all research between 2020 to 2023. A large bulk of that research focused on cancers (breast and gynecologic) or pregnancy.
This is despite the Health Portfolio Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis Plus Policy, which mandates for integrated sex and gender-based analyses in Canada. That policy came into effect in 2009 and aimed to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in health research.
'Mandates are not affecting the percentage of funding for women's health grants. More efforts and support beyond sex and gender mandates are needed to increase funding for and to diversify female-specific research beyond pregnancy and cancer. Research devoted to women's health factors is key to achieving personalized medicine and improved health outcomes for everyone,' the researchers wrote.
The lack of funded research into women's health also means many Canadians are misinformed and susceptible to disinformation.
A 2024 Abacus report commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) showed that a majority of Canadians now seek news and information online over TV or radio. Female respondents were more likely than men to use social media and online platforms to find information on specific health conditions, symptoms or treatment options.
'Given the complexity of women's health issues, which can range from endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), menopause and more, the quest for information is real. Women are more likely to experience dismissal or minimization of their symptoms, perpetuating stigma and shame,' the CMA said in a post published in March 2024.
'Algorithms that favour clicks and likes to the detriment of evidence-based facts make it increasingly difficult to discern health facts from fiction.'
A 2021 survey from three women's health foundations in Canada — the BC Women's Health Foundation, the Alberta Women's Health Foundation and the Women's College Hospital Foundation — found that a majority of Canadians were misinformed about women's health.
The survey suggests that 83 per cent of Canadians didn't know that 30 per cent of women suffer from periods severe enough to interfere with daily activities.
The report also said only 20 per cent of Canadians knew that heart disease kills more women than men each year.
'For so long, women's specific health needs have been largely ignored, under-researched, and underfunded. In fact, it takes 17 years for clinical research to filter down to medical practice, but women have only been included in trials for the past 20 years,' said Jennifer Bernard in 2021. Bernard is currently the president and CEO of the SickKids Foundation but was the former president and CEO of the Women's College Hospital Foundation from 2018 to 2023.
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