Newsletter

Women’s Health Blog

New Blog Post—Diversity in Academia: Personal Experience & Advice from a Post Doctoral Fellow

Our very own trainee, Travis Hodges, wrote an insightful piece about his experience in academia as a gay and black scientist. This article sheds light on the barriers minority students face as they consider entering and navigating the ivory tower. Click here to read his story and learn what advice he gives to other trainees. 

Recruiting Writers

We are seeking writers to contribute to our Women’s Health Blog. Blogs should be between 1000-2000 words and can be on any topic related to women’s health (e.g. sex and gender based analysis, policy issues impacting women’s health). Check out our first blog about how sex and gender can advance our knowledge on COVID-19 as an example. 

If you’re interested, send us an email at womenshealth.res@ubc.ca with your blog topic to get started!

Women's Health Seminar Series
Our 2020/2021 series (starting September 14th) has a great lineup of topics to explore including intergenerational transmission of domestic violence, knowledge translation, and perimenopause. All seminars are free and available to attend online. Registration has opened for next fall’s Seminar Series, so be sure to sign-up by clicking here. We have nearly 120 registrants so far!

Click here to register

Dr. Nisha Malhotra & Loose Lip Magazine

WHRC member, Dr. Nisha Malhotra, is a senior economics instructor at UBC and focuses on gender-based violence, child and maternal health from an interdisciplinary perspective. She was recently consulted by Loose Lip Magazine to discuss the rise in domestic violence during the pandemic. Check it out to see what she has to say.


Postpartum Fluoxetine Increased Material Inflammatory Signalling and Decreased Tryptophan Metabolism: Clues for Efficacy

A WHRC trainee, Wansu Qi, recently published a paper as first author in the Neuropharmacology journal. This article sheds light on one possible explanation for why SSRI treatments aren’t always effective in treating postpartum depression. Click here to read more about the possible mechanisms and biomarkers that underlie the limited efficacy of Prozac.

Women's Health Seminar Series Certificates

The 2019/2020 Women’s Health Seminar Series showcased 14 multidisciplinary talks on women’s health that covered a broad range of topics including biology, psychology, economics and more. Through it, we were able to provide free multidisciplinary training to trainees and provide a Certificate of Completion to those who attended 90% of the talks. 

We would like to congratulate the following recipients of our 2019/2020 Women’s Health Seminar Series Certificate of Completion—bravo!

• Travis Hodges

• Emily Clark

• Faith Jabs

• Ismalia Desousa

• Jasmeen Mohammed

• Joanna Rivera

• Lisanne ten Brinke

• Madison Lackie

• Melanie Lysenko-Martin

• Muna Ibrahim

• Sonia Milani

• Stephanie Lieblich

• Tanvi Puri

• Wansu Qiu

• Bonnie Lee

• Christine Anderl

• Elizabeth Pasman

We’d like to formally welcome the following new members to our cluster. We’re happy to have you working alongside us to support women’s health!

• Dr. Chantal Rytz—Researcher in the Laboratory of Human Cerebrovascular Physiology at the University of Calgary

• Dr. Colin Wallace—PDF, UBC Okanagan

Like many of us, the Women’s Health Research Cluster has taken a hit financially due to COVID-19. In addition to seeking new sources of funding, we’ve also started collecting donations.

If you feel passionate about the work we are doing and are in a position to give, consider making a one-time or monthly donation. 100% of proceeds will be used to promote women’s health research across public, government and academic domains.