Bruyère research teams are looking to make an impact at the Women Deliver 2019 Conference
05/27/2019
On June 3-6, Bruyère investigators are heading to Vancouver to participate in the Women Deliver 2019 Conference.
The conference will focus on challenges that face women and girls in the world today. Attendees will engage in topics to do with health, nutrition, education, and political empowerment, as well as human rights, good governance, and girls’ and women’s agency and equality.
“This event is part of a vitally important conversation about women’s health around the world,” explains Miriam Nkangu Nguilefem, a PhD candidate at the Bruyère Research Institute and University of Ottawa.
She will be attending the event with her supervisor Janet Hatcher Roberts, MSc. Together they will be advocating for a smartphone application that will help empower women and increase access to reproductive and maternal child health—especially during emergencies. The app is called BorneFyne, which helps connect pregnant women to health providers. The app is being implemented in some Cameroonian communities by uOttawa in collaboration with Effective Basic Services (eBASE). The project is funded by Grand Challenges Canada.
Miriam, Janet, and the eBASE Africa team have so far hosted pre-conference satellite events in Cameroon, Ottawa and will be hosting a workshop on BornFyne mobile application in Vancouver, to help promote the Women Deliver 2019 Conference. They are using these opportunity to consult stakeholders on the implementation of this smartphone app in Cameroonian communities.
BRI investigator Alison Krentel, PhD, and Mary Ellen Sellers, MA, will also be attending the conference. Together they will be representing both Bruyère and the Canadian Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs).
“Certain NTDs can disproportionately affect women and girls in the Global South,” explains Mary Ellen. This is often due to the kinds of activities they are required to do, such as collecting water from nearby streams. “These kinds of environments expose women to NTDs, putting them at greater risk of contraction.”
Alison and Mary Ellen will be joining the conversation on how to combat NTDs affecting women and girls. This is in addition to their recent efforts to raise the profile of NTDs among key decision makers in Canada.
They are also working hard to engage young people in the fight against NTDs. This is why they have recruited Prescilla Pangan as their Youth Ambassador at the event, who will be charged with being an active voice on social media at the event.
“We’re proud to be participating,” says Alison. “I’m excited to see what comes out of these conversations.”
Learn more about Women Deliver 2019.