Alberta anti-trans policies

On January 31st Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced her party’s plans for pronoun policies in schools, imposing parental opt-ins for 2SLGBTQ+ education, restricting trans youth from accessing gender-affirming care and participating in women’s sports teams. Justin Trudeau called these policies the most anti-2SLGBTQ+ in Canada – above and beyond current pronoun policies in Saskatchewan & New Brunswick.

We strongly denounce this legislation which is not backed by evidence, only right wing ideology. For how to fight back see our IG post.

Evaluation project – published!

We recently completed our CIHR funded evaluation project.

There were over 100 responses to our online survey and we also conducted interviews with patients, healthcare professionals and community cancer organisations. We wrapped it up with a web and social media analysis.

The full report is available here.

Health eMatters Conference

At the end of April, Kim attended the Health eMatters IMPACT conference ‘Bringing EDI to Clinical Trials’. Two days of workshops, talks and brainstorming for solutions to widen participation in clinical trials. Attendees included EDI patient advocates, industry partners, community organizations, healthcare professionals and researchers.

Kim has worked in oncology clinical trials for 12 years and brings an EDI lens through their personal life, research interests and Queering Cancer work. Kim commented:

“This event was a Venn diagram of my personal, professional and avocational life! It was a truly great, unique event that centered patients from marginalized populations. Day 1 laid bare the barriers to participation for equity deserving people – time, money, distance, stigma, discrimination, trust (or lack of). Day 2 was about solutions. We worked together to clear the path to participation. Ideas were collected to be developed into a white paper and an action plan for change. I can’t wait to see what’s next!”