Grand Rounds: Doing Time: - A Time to Develop a Health Action Strategy

November 02, 2012 9:00 AM

Abstract: At present the annual recidivism rate among 7000 admissions to female correctional centres in Canada is 40% within one year and 75% within two years. Few researchers have conceptualized imprisonment as an outcome of a disordered health and social environment. The overwhelming majority of women in prison have been subjected to poverty, child abuse, and role modeling of criminal behaviour by parents and, as adults, domestic violence. Our aim is to work with incarcerated women to improve our understanding of factors that prevent or facilitate their re-integration into society. In a cohort analysis, we followed 407 women following release from provincial prison in British Columbia, Canada, to evaluate the impact of exposure to intimate partner violence on their post-incarceration trajectory. Interviews were conducted at release and three months later by phone or in person with community-based peer researchers who themselves had been previously incarcerated.

Speaker: Dr. Patricia Janssen
Dr. Janssen conducts clinical trials and population-based studies to evaluate obstetrical interventions such as management of early labour, and alternative methods of pain management. She also designs new standards for fetal evaluation including intrauterine growth standards, and fetal oxygen saturation using near infra-red spectroscopy and standards for fetal heart rate patterns at preterm gestations. She works with marginalized women including women in the sex trade and previously incarcerated women to identify and test strategies to promote safety and self-reliance. For her work on home birth in British Columbia, she is the 2010 recipient of the University of British Columbia’s President”s Award for Public Education through Media. She is a Professor, Theme Leader, Maternal Child Health, and Director of the Master of Public Health Program in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and Associate Faculty in the Departments of Family Practice, Midwifery, and Obstetrics and Gynecology and the School of Nursing.

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