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Ottawa Citizen

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

Article content 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. Article content 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. Article content Article content 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. Article content Article content 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. Article content 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. Article content 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. Article content Article content 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. Article content Article content Currently, provinces and territories are responsible for collecting this data and practices may vary widely. Article content '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. Article content '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.'