Alice Aiken, Veteran and a CIMVHR founding director
Photo Credit: LinkedIn
Esprit de Corps Magazine October 2022 // Volume 29 Issue 9
Let's Talk About Women in the Military – Column 43
By Military Woman
Question:
How is health research for military/Veteran women going?
Answer:
The reply to this question may vary greatly depending on your perspective. To meaningfully answer this important question will require more than one column. Let’s start with a quick review of some research related basics.
What is health? The federal government generally uses the World Health Organization’s definition of health which is “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
What is research? The federal government defines research as an “undertaking intended to extend knowledge through a disciplined inquiry or systemic investigation.” To qualify as a “disciplined inquiry” the undertaking must be “conducted with the expectation that the method, results, and conclusions will be able to withstand the scrutiny of the relevant research community.”
Who does health research? Defence related health research is overseen by many different sources including the Canadian Armed Forces (Canadian Forces Health Services), the Department of National Defence (Defence Research and Development Canada and Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security) and the Department of Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC).
VAC funds multiple research arms including the VAC Research Directorate, the Chronic Pain Centre of Excellence for Canadian Veterans, the Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families (previously known as the Centre of Excellence for PTSD and Related Mental Health Conditions) and the Canadian Institute of Military Veteran Health Research (CIMVHR).
CIMVHR was initially set up by the federal government in 2010 to ensure the Canadian Forces Health Services had, when needed, access to ways to complete operational military medicine research. Honorary Captain (Navy) Alice Aiken PhD, herself also a military Veteran, served as CIMVHR’s first Scientific Director. Today CIMVHR, headquartered at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, partners with over 50 different Canadian and international universities.
CIMVHR disseminates partner research findings through its website, annual forum, and monthly journal.
Why is health research important? Research is a required pre-requisite to make evidence-based decisions regarding military/Veteran policies, programs, services, supports and care.
Is there still a “one size fits all” approach to military/Veteran health research? No, federal government and health care providers both endorse a sex and gender aware approach to health research impacting military/Veteran members versus an “one size fits all” or gender-blind approach.
Research into the health risks of various workplaces, civilian and military, only started in earnest during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Most of the initial health research on workplace hazards was, quite understandably given the time, focused on ensuring the wellbeing of male workers. To be even more specific, the foundational occupational health and safety related research, often still referred to today, largely assumed a young, healthy, white, cisgender, heterosexual, male worker with a forty-hour work week that exposed them to one, not multiple, workplace hazards. Workforce diversity at that time was so low, that many decision makers went along with a “one size fits all” approach to health research, allowing male-only research findings and recommendations to be applied directly to all workers.
Over the last 30 years especially, i.e., from the 1990’s onwards, all the previously male-only military workplaces have diversified. Workforce diversity goes beyond biological sex to also include variations in age, race, gender identification, sexual orientation, and other health influencing categories. Ideally, as soon as the military workforce started to significantly diversify from the population its occupational health research had originally been done on, a new research action plan should have been stood up.
Unfortunately, as discussed in a previous column (Do military women need special workplace considerations? Vol 27 Issue 5), military/Veteran women’s research in specific can be challenging to coordinate without direct political support and dedicated financial funding. Today, thanks to the 2022 federal budget, a military women’s health initiative is finally underway. It is hoped that a coordinated, inter-departmental research agenda to efficiently identify and rectify military workplace hazard knowledge gaps for women is underway.
When we know better, we can do better to ensure that ALL workers are equally protected from workplace injury and illness. Stay tuned for future columns on defence related health research.
