March 8 marks International Women’s Day, an event to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness of bias, and take action for equality.
Despite the leaps and bounds we have made in science and health care over the past few decades, there remains a lack of equality when it comes to women’s health research. It continues to be underfunded and under-researched.
At the CTN, we advocate for women’s health research, supporting several important studies. Two of these — CTN 262: Canadian HIV women’s sexual and reproductive health cohort study (CHIWOS) and CTN 277: AntiRetroviral therapy and Markers of Aging (CARMA) — have now joined forces on CTN 335: BC CARMA CHIWOS Collaboration (BCC3). The five-year women-centred, community- and clinic-based study will bring together women living with HIV, researchers, clinicians, and community partners in British Columbia to understand how to improve healthy aging for women living with HIV. The principal investigators on this study are CTN Investigators Drs. Hélène Côté, Melanie Murray, and Angela Kaida, and Valerie Nicholson.
We had the pleasure of speaking with several BCC3 investigators to learn more about the study and why we need to prioritize women’s health research. From top left to bottom right: Shelly T, Dr. Melanie Murray, Melanie L, Shayda Swann, Dr. Angela Kaida, Dr. Hélène Côté, and Amber Campbell.
“CARMA and CHIWOS were two prominent Canadian studies of women living with HIV and each had their strengths. CHIWOS collected data on the socio-structural determinants of health, while CARMA looked more into the biological side of things,” explained Dr. Côté. “It became obvious that working together would be greatly beneficial and would allow us to carry out more holistic research, building on the strengths of the two different cohorts.”