|
| Main
| français
| CWHN home |
|
Download
the PDF (388 KB, 18 Pages)
Redefining Policy Making Taking Action to Influence Policy Policy for Rural Women
|
|
What’s Policy Got to Do with It?
The Centres of Excellence for Women’s Health (CEWH) were established in 1996 to improve women’s health, in part by enhancing the Canadian health system’s understanding of and responsiveness to women and women’s health issues. The Centres were charged to employ networking as well as the generation of new knowledge and methodologies to facilitate research uptake and policy impact. In this issue of the Research Bulletin we ask what influence have the Centres had on policy to date. The articles collected here tell us that policy making is about both content and process. The processes by which the research is done can change behaviour and attitudes. The processes by which new information is disseminated can invite new stakeholders into the policy dialogue, and widen the scope of policy development and impact. A common thread among the articles in this issue is therefore attention to the processes of both research and policy making in order to maximize their responsiveness to the people they serve. Central to many projects within the program is a commitment to involving multiple stakeholders in research from inception through dissemination. "What would 250 women say..." describes, for example, what women in Saskatchewan and Manitoba told the Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence they wanted to see in a Health Action Plan. Similarly, the second paper from the Prairie Centre documents the experiences of farm women who, having been cut out of the policy-making process, need to have their voices heard again. Le Centre d’excellence pour la santé des femmes in Montreal hosted a symposium with caregivers’ associations from the province of Quebec, and then took this information, along with five years of research experience on women caregivers and a coalition of interested groups, into public consultations to change policy at the local community health level. Research sponsored by the Centres often includes a commitment to seeing the traditional "subjects" of research functioning as active partners in the research enterprise as study participants, advisors or investigators. Further, the research process is understood as an ongoing mechanism for capacity building among both community and academic researchers, one that ensures that everyone grows through the experience of collaboration. Finally, the research process does not end with the writing-up of the findings. Rather, strategic dissemination is necessary to maximize the likelihood of research uptake. In "The Mice that Roared," Nancy Poole outlines her approach to research on women and addictions, an approach that is inclusive, action-oriented and women-centred. Poole believes that this approach, combined with a solid foundation of information about how women have responded to existing addiction policies and services, has been key to her success in moving the agenda forward. We learn about some of the mechanisms used across the CEWH program to ensure that research findings become part of policy debates. The article about the Maritime Centre, for example, describes in detail some of the processes they used — including policy road shows, a dedicated research chair, and women’s health awards — but all the articles include a description of how the researchers took their message to decision makers and other researchers. We see everything from media events to research symposia to websites to policy papers used as strategies to "get the word out." Above all, good decisions require timely, relevant, useful information—including information that challenges taken-for-granted assumptions about the world. In "Policy from the Ground Up," Deborah Sarauer and Diane Martz describe the immediate uptake of observations made by their research subjects, farm women living in abusive relationships. The women’s criticisms led the local counselling service to "change its world view,"and its protocols. Researchers need to be willing to tackle the seldom-asked questions so that more is known about how things in both women’s health and policy making work. We also need to use research to evaluate policies once they are put in place to understand whether the policy is being implemented as planned and having its intended effects. This is critical in health care, where many practices remain unexamined. This issue offers only a taste of what is known about the impact of the program to date. Only a selection of impacts is highlighted here. Literally dozens of other research projects are nearing completion and comprehensive evaluations have been done or are under way in all the Centres to try to capture the diversity of their impacts on policy makers at all levels of Canadian society. I invite you to contact any of the Centres to learn more about what we are learning about women’s health every day. Ann Pederson |
| This page updated |
