Transcript Women's Health - F. Beryl Pilkington

F. Beryl Pilkington, RN; PhD
School of Nursing
Faculty of Health
York University
Biggest challenge re: advancing multicultural
women’s health research?
 Complexity of multicultural health issues combined with
multiplicity of perspectives, interests, and stakeholders
 How to identify priorities for research?
 Priorities depend upon perspectives, interests, power and
politics
Complexity of Multicultural Women’s Health
 ‘Multicultural women’ and social determinants of health:
 income and income distribution, education, unemployment and job security,
employment and working conditions, early childhood development, food
insecurity, housing, social exclusion, social safety net, health services, Aboriginal
status, gender, race, disability (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010)
 Intersectionality*
 A perspective that seeks to “reveal the dynamics of power” that lead to social
inequality and health inequities (Havinsky & Christoffersen, 2008)
 Social determinants tend to intersect, with compounding effects+
References
* Hankivsky O, Christoffersen A. (2008). Intersectionality and the determinants of health: A Canadian
perspective. Critical Public Health,18, 271-283.
+ Pilkington, F. B., Daiski, I. Lines, E., Bryant, T., Raphael, D., Dinca-Panaitescu, M., & Dinca-Panaitescu, S.
(2011). Type 2 diabetes in vulnerable populations: Community healthcare providers’ perspectives on health
service needs and policy implications. Canadian Journal of Diabetes, 35(5), 503-511.
Inequity: A challenge to Multicultural
Women’s Health Research?
 Inequity: the fundamental problem to be
addressed re: advancing multicultural women’s
health
 Is inequity also the biggest challenge re: advancing
multicultural women’s health research?
Most important thing OMHARN could do to
address this challenge?
 Complex challenges call for multi-faceted approaches to
solutions
 OMHARN is already helping to address this challenge
through bringing together stakeholders in the field of
multicultural health
 Could research priorities be identified?
 Could OMHARN act as a “broker” for stakeholders interested
in working on a particular multicultural health challenge?
 OMHRN could synthesize the large body of evidence that
poverty reduction would be the single most effective strategy
for improving the health of Ontarians (although, that may be
ignored as an ‘inconvenient truth’)