• Giving all women equal access to contraception
• Summer Student Research Day: July 21st, 2011
• WCRI post-doctoral fellow Carmen Logie awarded Grand Challenges grant
• Carmen Logie’s Grand Challenges award
• 10th Annual Graduate Student Research Day: Celebrating Trainee Research.
• Women’s College Research Institute 2nd Annual Research Papers Presentation and Awards Ceremony
• WCRI introduces the new Shirley Brown Chair in Women’s Health Research, March 1st, 2011
• WCRI study finds that diabetes patients with schizophrenia are more likely to develop complications from their illness.
• Dr. Sophie Jamal and the Nitrate Study featured on CTV news
• Helping HIV positive parents have healthy children - Dr. Mona Loutfy’s research with the Women and HIV Research Program, WCRI, is highlighted by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research for World AIDS Day, December 2010.
• A Global Education – Women’s College Research Institute welcomes visiting professors from around the world
• New research findings reveal diabetes cases increasing among young women in Ontario – Dr. Lorraine Lipscombe among lead authors of the latest chapter of the POWER Study examining diabetes in Ontario.
• Dr. An-Wen Chan receives Dissemination Events Grant from CIHR
• Dr. An-Wen Chan, Scientist, Women’s College Research Institute, answers questions on Skin Cancer on womenshealthmatters.ca
• On Thursday, July 22nd, 2010, the Women's College Research Institute hosted Summer Student Research Day. Students from the Women's Health Summer Experience program presented on the exciting research projects they worked on during the summer. This year, the program included over 17 undergraduate students and 10 Women's College Research Institute Scientists as research mentors. We were fortunate to also have several Post Doctoral Fellows and PhD students as mentors. This year marks the seventh year that the program has been held at the research institute.

This year, students had the opportunity to attend weekly Research Skills Sessions, Medical Ground Rounds, Research Dialogue Series, the Women and HIV Summer Teaching Sessions, and present their work at the annual Summer Student Research Day. These sessions provided students with the opportunity to ask scientists about their academic training, research programs and advice on how to become a successful researcher. This year was the first year medical students in the program led a Research Skills Session on "Applying to Medical School".

As the summer students end their term at the WCRI, we thank them for their remarkable work and wish them much success in the future!

Dr. Paula Rochon, Vice President Research, Women's College Hospital; Kate Mosley, WCRI Summer Student;
and Dr. Andrea Gruneir, Scientist, Women's College Research Institute.

• Women’s College Research Institute’s Dr. Janice Du Mont comments on drug-facilitated sexual assault and a new detection card soon to be available in Quebec pharmacies.
• Scientists at Women’s College Research Institute Funded to Improve Follow-up Care After a Cancer Diagnosis - Ontario Institute for Cancer Research highlights support for the new Women’s Cancer Survivorship Team.
• Preventing Domestic Violence at Every Opportunity – Women’s College Research Institute finds paramedics willing to support victims of domestic violence, but not sure how.
• New Study Lends Support to Victims who Believe They were Drugged and Sexually Assaulted - See Dr. Janice Du Mont talk about this study on Global TV
• See our new publication, Research for the Health of Every Woman, for an introduction to our organization
• Majority of Ontarians suffering from rheumatoid arthritis not receiving the speciality care they need
  In a newly released portion of the Project for an Ontario Women's Health Evidence-Based Report or POWER study, Dr. Gillian Hawker and her colleagues reveal that nearly 60 per cent of Ontarians with rheumatoid arthritis - an autoimmune disease that causes chronic inflammation of the joints - were not seen by a specialist within a one year period to treat the debilitating disease. Even more concerning is that women of child-bearing age are less likely to see a specialist than women 45 or older.....
• Little interaction between genes and environmental risk factors for breast cancer
  In a commentary in The Lancet, Dr. Steven Narod discusses recent data published from the Million Women Study that shows little interaction between genetic and environmental risk factors for breast cancer. He expands on this topic in this interview on MedPage......
• Celebrating a New Commitment to Surgical Breast Cancer Research
  On May 31, 2010, the Women's College Hospital Foundation hosted a celebration of the new Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation - Ontario Region Chair in Surgical Breast Cancer Research awarded to Dr. John Semple...
• Graduate Student Research Day showcases the work of Emerging Women's Health Scientists
  The Women's Collge Research Institute held its ninth annual graduate student research day presenting the work of remarkable young scientists. Use the link above to learn more about the day's award winners and the key note address by Professor Rebecca Cook...
• WCRI Research Awards Celebrate Outstanding Publications by our Scientists
  Publications are one of the key indicators of scientific success. In a recent award ceramony, adjunct scientist Dr. Kelly Metcalfe and trainee Celeste Hamilton were honoured for their outstanding research papers published in the past year...
• Gillian Hawker named Distinguished Senior Mentor
  In a ceramony on April 28th, Dr. Gillian Hawker was awarded the Distinguished Senior Mentor award acknowledging her role in the success of many students and scientists at Women's College Hospital....
• Deep Vein Thrombosis - Is it Different in Pregnancy?
  If blood flow from the legs is restricted, blood clots, or deep vein thrombosis (DVT),can form in the veins. Clots usually begin in the calf and extend upwards, causing painful swelling. Such clots can travel through the body, lodging in the lungs and causing serious problems. Pregnant women also have an increased risk of DVT, likely due to pressure on the veins of the legs from the developing fetus. A literature review recently done by WCRI scientist Dr. Wee Shian Chan cautions physicians not to assume that clots in pregnant women develop the same way as in non-pregnant patients......
• New Tool Aims To Improve Reporting of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Research
  A new tool developed by a team of leaders in the Canadian health research community aims to minimize financial conflicts of interest to promote transparency in clinical research. WCRI senior scientist, Dr. Paula Rochon, was the principal investigator of this initiative. This new tool provides a single structured document to improved the reporting process for financial conflicts of interest....
• Increased Risk of Postpartum Depression for Mothers with Preterm and Low-Birth-Weight Infants
  When caregivers can predict which women are at risk of postpartum depression, they can react more promptly and appropriately. Most work on postpartum depression focuses on factors in the mother's life, but mothers and newborn babies are intimately connected. This idea prompted WCRI scientist-in-training Dr. Simone Vigod and Dr. Lori Ross with colleagues Laura Villegas from CAMH and Dr. Cindy-Lee Dennis from the University of Toronto's faculty of nursing to go back through the research that has already been done - and look for a pattern that those studies hadn't considered. Dr. Vigod wrote the resulting paper revealing that if a baby is preterm or has a low birth weight the child's mother has a higher risk of depression....
• Women with spinal cord injuries have Pap screening rates similar to general population
  Previous research has suggested that women with traumatic spinal cord injuries may not be getting Pap tests, which screen for early signs of cervical cancer, as often as other women. New research by Dr Susan Jaglal and graduate student Sara Guilcher, along with Alice Newman of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, suggests that this is not the case in Ontario....

News Links

• WCRI post-doc fellow awarded $100K grant to empower at-risk women
• New study: patients at high risk for hospital readmission need special care
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