Heart & Stroke backs a Canada-wide push to rethink rehab through menopause, mental health, and more
A $5m research network will spend five years redesigning how women in Canada recover after strokes, heart attacks, and cardiac arrest.
Heart & Stroke, with partner Brain Canada, announced the funding for the Redesigning Effective aNd Equitable systems of care for Women's heart-brain recovery (RENEW) Network, led by Jodi Edwards of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and the Bruyère Health Research Institute.
The network will build a Canada-wide collaboration to improve rehabilitation and recovery for women after what the charity calls heart-brain events, including stroke, heart attack, and cardiac arrest.
Heart & Stroke said women recovering from these events often wait longer for rehabilitation, are referred at lower rates, and take part in recovery programs less than men.
Those gaps widen, the charity added, because rehabilitation systems frequently overlook sex-specific factors such as menopause and mental health, along with sociocultural factors including geography, income, ethnicity, disability, and caregiving responsibilities.
RENEW aims to redesign women's cardiac and stroke rehabilitation through a whole-person approach that weighs the physiological, psychological, emotional, social, and environmental sides of recovery.
Roth said the RENEW Network addresses "inequities in rehabilitation and recovery."
The chief executive officer of Heart & Stroke said it unites researchers, clinicians, people with lived experience, and health system leaders from across the country.
Together, he said, they will "generate evidence and solutions" for women nationwide.
The network will study how menopause, hormone changes, and hormone therapy affect recovery after heart attack and stroke, per the announcement.
It also plans to develop sex- and gender-sensitive mental health screening tools, including an Indigenous-specific tool co-developed with Indigenous partners, test new rehabilitation and mental health interventions, and use national data to map referral pathways between cardiac and stroke rehabilitation and mental health services.
The aftermath of a heart-brain event shapes a person's health "for years to come," Poupon said. Supporting Edwards and the RENEW Network helps close "a critical gap in the research continuum," according to the president and chief executive officer of Brain Canada, and moves research on women's brain health into recovery and care.
RENEW is the third Research Network of Excellence in Women's Heart and/or Brain Health funded by Heart & Stroke and its partners.
Earlier recipients include Rohan D'Souza of McMaster University, who leads the Canadian Network of Networks to Reduce Cardiovascular Mortality and Morbidity in Pregnancy, and Amy Yu of the Sunnybrook Research Institute and the University of Toronto, who leads StrokeGoRed.
Heart & Stroke and the Canada Brain Research Fund financed the network, according to the announcement.
The fund is an arrangement between the federal government, through Health Canada, and the Brain Canada Foundation.
