**apologies for cross-posting

**please distribute widely to your networks

 

Centre for Urban Health Initiatives (2008-2009) Seminar Series

 

Thursday November 20, 2008

 

(11am- 1pm) **note time and alternative location**

 

"What About the Guys? Young Men's Invisibility in Sexual Risk and Sexual
Health Research"

Elizabeth Saewyc, PhD, RN, CIHR/PHAC CIHR/PHAC Applied Public Health Chair
in Youth Health; Associate Professor, University of British Columbia School
of Nursing; Research Director, McCreary Centre Society

**Co-sponsored by the LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence and Conflict
Resolution, York University

Summary: Much of the research on adolescent sexual health and risk
behaviours focuses only on girls and young women, whether the studies are
about teen births, contraceptive practices, or even sexual violence and
exploitation. Yet most of these sexual health events involve more than one
person-and that other person is often male. Even sexual violence, although
disproportionately experienced by women, is also targeted towards boys and
young men, and they too can experience lifelong health issues as a result.
So why are they so invisible? This presentation will explore the ways data
are gathered for population-level sexual health studies, how and perhaps why
sexual health and risk issues get framed as "female" issues, and what we
learn when we ask the same questions for adolescent and young adult males.

Bio: Dr. Elizabeth M. Saewyc is an Associate Professor in the School of
Nursing and the Division of Adolescent Medicine, Department of Pediatrics at
the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She holds a Canadian
Institute for Health Research/Public Health Agency of Canada Applied Public
Health Chair, and is a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar.
She also serves as Research Director for the McCreary Centre Society, a
community-based youth health research and youth empowerment organization.
She teaches public health nursing, adolescent health, and research methods.
Her research focuses on the sexual and mental health issues of youth, with a
particular emphasis on understanding the links between stigma, violence, and
trauma, how these influence their coping and risk behaviours, and what
protective factors in their relationships and environments can help reduce
their risks and foster resilience. The particular groups of young people
include: sexual minority youth (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
teens), homeless and runaway youth, sexually-abused and sexually-exploited
teens, pregnant and parenting adolescents, youth in custody, immigrant and
refugee populations, and indigenous young people in Canada and other
countries.

Location: Room 280 York Lanes, York University

Alternate Location (if York University strike persists): Room 2111 Sidney
Smith, 100 St. George, University of Toronto

Wednesday December 10, 2008

 

"My Health Has Improved because I Always Have Everything I Need Here.": 

A Qualitative Exploration of Change in Health Status Since Migration

Kathi Wilson, Geography & Planning, University of Toronto Mississauga - 2006
CUHI Seed Grant Recipient

Summary: Immigrants in Canada constitute approximately 20 percent of the
total population and will continue to account for a significant portion of
the country's population in the future. Accordingly, a growing body of
research has focused on examining the disparity in health status between the
increasing foreign-born and the Canadian-born populations. The healthy
immigrant effect, in particular, acknowledges that immigrants have better
health status than their Canadian-born counterparts upon arrival in Canada.
However, studies have shown that over time immigrants' health status
declines to the level of the Canadian-born population. This study is one of
the first to qualitatively examine the factors associated with the observed
change in health status among immigrants. The paper presents the results of
23 in-depth interviews with recent (less than 3 years of residency),
mid-term (3-10 years), and long-term (more than 10 years) immigrants living
in the Greater Toronto Area. The findings reveal that the majority of the
participants believed their health had remained stable or increased over
time due to improved living standards and lifestyle behaviours in Canada.
Those who perceived their health to have worsened over time attributed the
change to life course events rather than a lack of health-promoting
opportunities in the country or their adoption of an unhealthy lifestyle.
This research highlights the need to incorporate more mental health measures
into the current understanding of the healthy immigrant effect and its
decline, as well as continue to focus on those factors that contribute to
high levels of stress and subsequent negative health outcomes among more
recent immigrants.

 

Location: University College, Room 177, 15 King's College Circle, University
of Toronto St. George Campus

 

Thursday January 22, 2009

 

Blake Poland (Public Health Science, University of Toronto) & Cheryl
Teelucksingh (Sociology, Ryerson University) - CUHI Environmental Health
Justice Co-Leaders

 

Summary: TBA (topic will be relevant to Environmental Health Justice)

 

February 2009 - date TBA

 

Good Governance for Local Environment and Health Decision-Making: Insights
from Two Case Communities

 

David Noble, Social and Political Thought, York University

 

Summary: Presentation will highlight insights on the governance context for
local environment and health decision-making in two case communities - Owen
Sound, Ontario and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

 

Location: TBA

 

March 2009 - date TBA

 

Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, City University of New
York

 

April 2009 - date TBA

 

Taking Action: Developing Aboriginal Youth Leadership in HIV Prevention

 

June Larkin (The Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI), University of
Toronto) - 2008 Seed Grant Recipient & 2007 Community-Based Research Award
of Merit

 

Project Summary: This project consists of an innovative knowledge
dissemination strategy for research on HIV/AIDS and Aboriginal youth.  Our
goals are to: 1) involve Aboriginal youth in a performed ethnography project
designed to turn data from our study on HIV/AIDS and Aboriginal youth into
scripts and discussion questions that can be used to educate both Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal communities; 2) develop a draft evaluation tool to assess
the effectiveness of the scripts as a knowledge dissemination strategy; and
3) pilot the performed ethnography and evaluation tool with Aboriginal youth
and non-Aboriginal youth. This project extends the collaborative work of the
Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP) Project, University of Toronto
and the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN) to include Native Child and
Family Services and will be used as the basis of a larger proposal to
support the wider dissemination of this prevention strategy and to assess
its effectiveness with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups.

 

 

Alexis Kane Speer, M.A.

Centre Coordinator/ Research Associate

Centre for Urban Health Initiatives (CUHI)

University College, Room 259

University of Toronto

15 King's College Circle

Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H7

416-978-7223

FAX: 416-946-0669

 


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