Speaker Series

We host the Speaker Series from our main office. We showcase speakers who are researchers from the Centre, members of organizations who share our vision of women's health, or visitors from around the world who are travelling through Vancouver whose work can inform our own.  We are always pleased to provide a forum for knowledge exchange. 

Thinking about Collaboration:
Child Welfare and Substance Use Services

Thursday, Feb 10, 2011
BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health
Room E311—4500 Oak Street
Vancouver, BC

Collaborative models and approaches for increasing capacity to support women and their families who are involved with child welfare because of their substance use

Tammy MacKenzie, Carolyn Ussher and Diane Smylie will provide an overview of 4 Toronto-based, collaborative initiatives, relevant to the BC context:

1. Designing and piloting of an on-line provincial training on substance use for child welfare staff
2. Locating a substance use consultant within child welfare to build capacity through on-site training and consultation with child welfare staff
3. Developing best practice guidelines on substance use for intake staff at child welfare
4. Weaving collaboration between sectors, into a substance use program for pregnant and parenting women and their children
   

Tammy MacKenzie, M.Ed., is the Manager of the Metro Addiction Assessment Referral Service and the Scarborough Addiction Services Partnership, both programs of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. She has many years of experience in both front-line and management roles working in substance use services with a particular focus on working from a Harm Reduction approach. Before CAMH, Tammy was employed at the Jean Tweed Centre for seven years and managed their outreach and children service programming.

Carolyn Ussher, MSW, is the Manager of Client Services at the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. Carolyn has worked in the child welfare sector for 17 years including many years as an Intake Supervisor. She wrote her Master’s Thesis on Harm Reduction in Child Welfare and has taken on a leadership role within her agency and the province in the promotion of harm reduction and holistic supports for families impacted by substance use. She has also taken a lead role in developing collaborative initiatives with substance use services in Toronto.

Diane Smylie, MSW, currently works at the BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health. She has recently moved to BC from Ontario where she worked at the Jean Tweed Centre for Women (and their families) as the Director of Community Integration and Project Development. In that role she focused

Thursday, Dec 16, 2010
BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health
Room E311—4500 Oak Street
Vancouver, BC

Migrant women have poorer pregnancy and postpartum outcomes. Are these related to maternal characteristics or to the receiving country’s characteristics of maternity care?

This presentation consists of two parts. The first part will summarize the most important findings of a project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation aiming at comparing Canada’s and Germany’s (and the UK’s) maternity care provided for migrant women. This work so far was based on a review of literature and policy documents; consultation with selected experts and workshops with service users, practitioners and researchers. In the second part, routinely collected perinatal data from Germany (1990-1999 and 2001-2007) are presented that show migrant women’s greater vulnerability for stillborn babies and (severe) postpartum morbidity. Potential ways to improve migrant women’s perinatal health will be discussed.

Birgit Reime is a visiting scholar at the BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health. She received her ScD in Psychology (1998) and MSc in Public Health/Epidemiology (2002) from Germany. Birgit was a visiting researcher at the Centre of Healthcare Innovation and Improvement (CFRI) (2003-04) and a post-doctoral fellow (2004-05) at UBC with NEXUS, a multi-disciplinary research network on health behaviour, previously funded by CIHR. Birgit’s research program focuses on maternal and child health, especially on the health of migrant and minority women.

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