Across all our projects, we pursue the goal of bringing knowledge to action to create lasting social change and health improvement for women. We collaborate with researchers, policy makers, health system planners, and community-based advocates across Canada and internationally to facilitate knowledge mobilization.
At the CEWH, we pursue three main policy and research approaches:
- Contributing to the building of sex and gender science to improve or redress gaps in understanding women’s health and the many under-researched conditions, issues or diseases that impact female bodies.
- Sex and gender-based analysis+ (SGBA+) to identify the differential impacts of gendered norms, identities and stereotypes on the health and well-being of women, girls, men, boys and all gender groups.
- Gender transformative solutions that increase gender specific knowledge, undermine gender stereotyping, reduce gender blindness in health programs and policies, and increase gender equity.
We recently completed a SGBA+ analysis of the management of prescription drugs in Canada. Learn more here.
The following resources and tools cover a range of health and social issues to examine how sex and gender apply in developing health policy and health promotion.
Tools for policy-makers and researchers: 
- Templates for integrating sex and gender-related factors into your work (2024) – These templates can be used across research and policy topics to highlight gaps and knowledge, and help focus on what aspects of sex and/or gender might matter to your topic. The templates can be used to map examples a) when reviewing existing literature; b) when applying a sex, gender and equity-based analysis (SGBA+) to existing evidence; c) when designing a research project; and d) when drafting or implementing a program or policy to enhance precision.
- Mapping the Landscape of Sex, Gender and Health – graphical depictions of key concepts (2024) – This resource offers visualizations of the key concepts summarized in Greaves & Ritz 2022 paper for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
- Integrating Sex and Gender Informed Evidence into Your Practices: 10 Key Questions on Sex, Gender & Substance Use (2020) – This workbook provides guidance on integrating sex and gender into substance use services and policy and describes why and how sex and gender matter in understanding and responding to substance use issues. Evidence, examples and reflective exercises are offered.
Reports:
- Women’s Substance Use Treatment and Recovery (2024) – This report summarizes evidence and expertise on women’s substance use treatment and recovery approaches and provides recommendations for research and evaluation priorities in services and systems serving women and girls with substance use concerns.
- Including Sex, Gender, and Equity in the Action Plan for Pain in Canada (2024) – This policy report examines the research on sex and gender factors affecting chronic pain and applies SGBA+ to the Action Plan for Pain in Canada.
- Risk Reviewed: Integrating sex and gender into the lifecycle management of prescription drugs (2022) – This policy report examines the research on sex, gender, and equity factors affecting prescription drugs and applies SGBA+ to the management of prescription drugs in Canada.
- Substance use among women in the context of the corollary pandemics of COVID-19 and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) (2020) – This document reports on a rapid review of the literatures on disasters/pandemics and IPV, and on the relationship between IPV and substance use.
- Sex, Gender and Cannabis Research Report (2019) – This report reviews research and data on cannabis use and its effects, highlighting sex and gender related factors and issues.
- Better Science with Sex and Gender: A Primer for Health Research (2007) – This primer is intended to help researchers understand how sex and gender contribute to health and suggests ways to incorporate this understanding into research practices.
Training:
- Gender Transformative Health Promotion course (2014) – This online course provides an introduction to the key principles and ideas underlying gender transformative health promotion and is designed for a range of audiences concerned with women’s health, including physicians, nurses, social workers, students, midwives, researchers, program managers, and policy makers.
Books:
- Gender Unchained: Notes from the equity frontier (2017) – This book takes a hard look at the many persisting gendered inequities in our modern world, and suggests that we need to rethink our approach to seeking solutions. Greaves and Poole consider how gender inequity is a moral, economic, legal and justice issue that affects our collective progress.
- Making it Better: Gender-Transformative Health Promotion (2014) – In this collection, transformative initiatives and policies for health promotion are offered for various settings, including clinical medicine, sociology, epidemiology, kinesiology, education, and public policy.
- Designing and Conducting Gender, Sex, & Health Research (2012) – This book, edited by Dr. John L. Oliffe and CEWH Senior Investigator Dr. Lorraine Greaves, critically examines gender and sex in study designs, methods, and analysis in health research.
- Rising to the Challenge: Sex-and gender-based analysis for health planning, policy and research in Canada (2009) – This book describes the process of sex- and gender-based analysis (SGBA) and offers a collection of case studies and commentaries that illustrate SGBA in action.
Journal articles:
- We need more-nuanced approaches to exploring sex and gender in research (2024)
- Supportive alcohol policy as a key element of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder prevention (2023)
- Sex, Gender and Health: Mapping the Landscape of Research and Policy (2022)
- Transcending the Male-Female Binary in Biomedical Research: Constellations, Heterogeneity, and Mechanism When Considering Sex and Gender (2022)
- Examining barriers to harm reduction and child welfare services for pregnant women and mothers who use substances using a stigma action framework (2020)
- Missing in Action: Sex and Gender in Substance Use Research (2020)
- Smoking on the margins: a comprehensive analysis of a municipal outdoor smoke-free policy (2016)
- Gender-transformative health promotion for women: a framework for action (2015)
- Can Tobacco Control Be Transformative? Reducing Gender Inequity and Tobacco Use among Vulnerable Populations (2014)
Collaborations and Partnerships:
- Sex, Gender and Equity Analyses info sheet (2019) – Prepared in partnership with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, this info sheet describes the importance of SGBA+ to the substance use and addiction field and offers guidance about how to integrate it into research, knowledge mobilization and policy-related activities.
Learn more:
- Visit the Publications page to find related journal articles and other publications of interest.