Igniting an Agenda for Health Promotion for Women: Critical Perspectives, Evidence-Based Practice, And Innovative Knowledge Translation (Commentary‪)‬

Health promotion is a set of strategic activities designed to positively influence health and quality of life. (1) It includes activities aimed at individuals as well as those directed at entire populations. Despite the general acceptance of gender as a determinant of health and the inclusion of women and girls as important subpopulations in population health frameworks, (2) health promotion has not articulated how to integrate gender into its vision and practice. Nor has the field addressed fully how its theories, methods and activities may sustain gendered forms of oppression that contribute to women's health inequities. (3) The recent report of the international Women and Gender Equity Knowledge Network argued that gender inequity is among the most influential of the social determinants of health (SDOH). (4) In Canada, both women and men suffer from the effects of social inequities that shape their access to resources, living conditions and health services. While women's health generally compares favourably to men's in Canada with respect to mortality, over their lifetime, on average, women experience higher rates of chronic disease and a greater burden of disability than men. (5) Further, gender differences are dynamic; recent research suggests that the life expectancy of women in British Columbia is not rising at the same rate as men's, challenging the assumption that women in the province consistently outlive men. (6) There is also increasing evidence that health care interventions--including health promotion--may be more effective if they are designed with gender in mind. (7) Indeed, Sen and Ostlin (4) suggest that "taking action to improve gender equity in health and to address women's rights to health is one of the most direct and potent ways to reduce health inequities and ensure effective use of health resources" (p.1).