Research

Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI):
Research Changes Lives

The WHRI promotes the development of new research in
women’s health.

There is a great need to improve provincial capacity in women’s health research as there are still many unanswered questions about girls’ and women’s health. The WHRI leads, participates in and partners with national and international clinical, research and education networks to advance the goal of better health for women and their families.

BC Women’s has a long history of conducting vital women’s health research in order to support better health and improved care for women, girls and their families in BC and around the world.

The WHRI represents a bold and innovative development that will improve the health and welfare of women and families throughout our Province and beyond our borders – nationally and internationally.

You can learn more about the WHRI on their own, independent website, www.whri.org

Research is central to providing the scientific foundation for changes and improvements in health practices and policies. New knowledge generated by science and research helps doctors make key decisions. It provides information needed to develop:

  • care and treatment
  • policies and programs
  • and services and education

All of which are vital to improving the health and welfare of B.C.’s women, their families and their communities.

Our fundamental research focus is borne of a primary belief:
healthy women create healthy families that build healthy communities.

Below are just a few examples of how research conducted at BC Women’s Hospital has had benefits that extend well beyond the laboratory to inform our delivery of care and change our health care practices.

This primal connection between research and application of the important findings that flow from research means women and families obtain immediate benefits from the new knowledge we have garnered.

  • Researchers demonstrating a high rate of cervical cancer among Asian women, led to the establishment of the first clinic in Canada dedicated to meeting the cervical and breast health needs of Asian women at BC Women’s Hospital.
  • The establishment of BC Women’s Osteofit program led to fundamental changes and improvements in the delivery of care and services. Researchers discovered the beneficial impact physical activity has on women’s bone health and the ability of exercise to slow the decline in bone mass and reduce the risk of falls in older women.1 The findings from that research led to the development of Osteofit, an exercise and education program designed for people with osteoporosis that operates in more than 70 community centres across the province.
  • Another study by BC Women’s researchers revealed that 50% of women with disabilities had not had cervical cancer screening and 30% had not had a mammography. BC Women’s created the Access Clinic, the first program in Canada specifically designed to meet the screening needs of women with disabilities in order to eliminate this gap in services.
  • Our maternity care research has shown that early amniocentesis2 is not as safe as having the procedure at 15 to 17 weeks of pregnancy; this profound new knowledge has not only changed prenatal diagnostic practices at BC Women’s but has changed hospital practices worldwide.
  • Similarly, the discovery of an effective drug regimen for pregnant HIV positive women by researchers working at BC Women’s Oak Tree Program has meant not one HIV positive baby has been born to an HIV positive mother in this drug treatment program in British Columbia since 1995.

1 A randomized controlled trial conducted by Dr. Karim Khan and Dr. Heather McKay of the University of British Columbia’s Bone Health Research Group found that of 100 women age 70 and older, those who took the Osteofit program improved balance and strength compared to those who did not participate. In another study of the same group, women age 75 to 85 years old who undertook supervised strength or balance training for six months reduced their fall risk score by more than 50 per cent.

2 A procedure in which a small sample of amniotic fluid is drawn from the uterus using a needle to detect genetic abnormalities in the fetus.