National Women's Health Research Initiative: Initiative Components
National Women's Health Research Initiative: Pan-Canadian Women's Health Coalition
The Pan-Canadian Women's Health Coalition (the Coalition) is one of the two funding streams under the National Women's Health Research Initiative, and it is a collaboration between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Institute of Gender and Health and Women and Gender Equality Canada.
The Coalition will be composed of hubs across Canada linked through a coordinating centre that will work together to maximize the visibility and impact of women's health research and practice in Canada. The hubs and the coordinating centre will be led by diverse teams consisting of Canadian non-governmental organizations (including community organizations and regional health authorities), healthcare professionals, early career researchers and trainees, Indigenous Peoples, and people with lived and living experience navigating women's health. Together, they will mobilize new and existing knowledge into effective, gender-sensitive, and culturally appropriate women's health services across Canada. Importantly, processes will be designed to bring together community-based groups of women who experience multidimensional forms of discrimination at the intersections of sexual orientation, gender, race/ethnicity, disability, Indigeneity, and other aspects of diversity (including but not limited to age, faith, immigrant status, language) and/or oppressive processes (e.g., ableism, classism, racism, xenophobia, heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, women experiencing prejudice, discrimination and marginalization).
Applications for the hubs and coordinating centre occured over two phases through two separate funding opportunities. Both funding opportunities are now closed. The hubs funding opportunity was launched in Fall 2022, while the coordinating centre was launched in Spring 2023. The 10 virtual hubs were announced in August 2023.
The objectives the Pan-Canadian Women's Health Coalition - Hubs are to:
- Mobilize and scale-up newly generated and existing knowledge and models of care into effective, gender-sensitive, and culturally appropriate women's health and wellness services across Canada.
- Maximize research impact within and beyond the Coalition to help ensure evidence is integrated into health policy, decision making, and planning to support community, regional, provincial, territorial, and /or federal efforts regarding women's health.
- Build capacity for the next generation of women's health researchers through training and mentorship opportunities embedded within the hub to support the development of a sustainable women's health research ecosystem in Canada.
- Engage in community-based priority setting activities and identify future critical areas of women's health research based on community, regional and/or national needs.
A networking and linkage tool has been developed to facilitate connections between individuals and organizations that are interested in working together as part of these funding opportunities.
Ideas Fair and Learning Circle
Thank you to everyone who attended the virtual Ideas Fair and Learning Circle on October 25-26 2022, hosted by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, CIHR's Institute of Gender and Health and Women and Gender Equality Canada. Community experts came together to develop their ideas to identify and address community, regional and/or national challenges in women's health and wellness.
The goals of the Ideas Fair and Learning Circle were to:
- Create an accessible, culturally safe, trauma-informed and non-stigmatizing space for diverse groups of people to meet and share their stories related to navigating women's health and wellness;
- Provide an opportunity for potential applicants to network, develop their ideas to address challenges navigating women's health and wellness, and form teams to co-produce the goals and composition of their hub application; and,
- Solicit input from participants on the responsibilities of the coordinating centre and further define its role as the overarching organizing body of the Coalition.
More details on the outcomes of the event can be found on the Ideas Fair and Learning Circle webpage.
Pan-Canadian Women's Health Coalition – Coordinating Centre
The coordinating centre will facilitate harmonization and build synergies among the hubs, maximize the impact of the hubs' activities, and accelerate pan-Canadian knowledge mobilization. Each hub will be expected to develop a symbiotic approach with the coordinating centre to help develop solutions to pan-Canadian challenges in women's health. The specific roles and responsibilities of the coordinating centre will be informed by discussions at the Ideas Fair and Learning Circle and the funded hubs.
National Women's Health Research Initiative: Innovation Fund
The innovation fund is the second funding stream under the National Women's Health Research Initiative. Two funding opportunities were launched through the Innovation Fund:
- Biomedical Discovery Grants will support biomedical research by teams proposing bold and innovative research questions in women's health.
- Operating Grants launched to support the following areas of women's health:
- Translational research in healthcare diagnostics, therapeutics, and devices.
- Healthcare implementation research to remove barriers to access to healthcare.
All funded research projects will be required to link with the Coalition to identify emerging knowledge mobilization opportunities to support improvements in women's health policy, practice, and services.
All funding opportunities will be posted on ResearchNet. Visit the Funding section for information about funding opportunities associated with this initiative. Additional information will be added as the initiative is developed and evolves.
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