Grant: National Women's Health Res. Init.:Pan-Can. Women's Health Coa. - Hubs

Incarcerated women experience worse pregnancy and reproductive health than women in the general population, but we don't understand very well what policies/programs will best improve their health. Wellness Within (Halifax) is the only Canadian non-profit organization focused on improving the reproductive health of criminalized women. Wellness Within provides and advocates for health services in addition to conducting research; so, people with lived experiences, healthcare workers, and policy makers all contribute to research which directly addresses specific healthcare and policy needs. However, an identified gap in these activities is expertise to use 'natural experiments' to measure how effective specific policies/programs actually are in improving health. These analyses are crucial to help us understand which policies/programs should be expanded, and how to concentrate our efforts to meaningfully improve the health of women & gender-diverse people experiencing incarceration in Canada. We will extend Wellness Within's work by bringing together: 1) people with lived experiences and community organizations who know what the important health policies/programs are across Canada, and 2) researchers with expertise in measuring the impact of health policies using population data and natural experiments. We will: 1)Figure out which policies/programs to improve reproductive health in people experiencing incarceration need better evaluation and how to best design these studies, 2)Invite people with lived experiences, community organizations, and researchers to prioritize the policies/programs which most urgently need better evaluation, or are well supported by evidence and need to be implemented, and 3)Create national recommendations and guidelines to implement policies/programs which are known to work. These activities will improve health equity for incarcerated women by identifying and supporting effective reproductive health programs and policies in Canada.