Reporter-at-large

A visit to the year's "most important women's health event"

20,000 descend on Toronto's Metro Convention Centre ready to learn. "Find your passion and pursue it..."

By Ilina Stranberg

It's a sign of the ballooning interest in women's health that almost 20,000 people braved Toronto's January deep freeze to attend the eighth annual Women's Health Matters Forum & Expo at the Metro Convention Centre. The two-day happening, billed as "the most important women's health event of the year," was put on by Sunnybrook & Women's College Health Sciences Centre and a coterie of big-league sponsors like General Motors, Shoppers Drug Mart, Wyeth and Janssen. That the overwhelmingly female crowd shared the convention floor on Friday with an all-male hockey industry trade show was an irony not lost on either side and made for some interesting mingling in the common areas as well.

The key differences in the sexes from a healthcare perspective were outlined quickly from the podium: women live two years longer than men, suffer from more chronic illnesses, are primarily at risk from cardiovascular disease and cancers (lung, heart and colon) and, surprise, those with arthritis don't have the same access to joint replacement surgery as their male counterparts.

Toronto Star managing editor Mary Deanne Shears, sporting a jaunty streak of fuchsia in her neatly cropped blond hair, caught the zeitgeist in her opening speech. She juxtaposed interest in topics like money, politics and sports with coverage of "what really matters in the world" -- health trends, care and caregivers. She was unapologetic about the heat her paper took last summer for its controversial series on SARS. "I felt there were real heroes in hospitals," she told the crowd.

When her talk was over, the audience, led by the young York Stars Aesthetic Rhythmic Gymnasts, paraded down the hall into the crowded bazaar-like exhibition hall. Five forums took place in the hour that followed, including Teen Sexuality; 7 Steps in 7 Days for a Fitness Makeover; and Towards a Coherent Public Policy in Women's Health: Getting Beyond the Gridlock. This latter event was a panel discussion led by Dr Carolyn Bennett, the new minister of state for public health. Joining her on the six-member panel was a clutch of powerful women in the health policy field, including Dr Heather Maclean, Director of the Centre for Research in Women's Health and Jane Pepino, Chair of the Ontario Women's Health Council.

MINISTERIAL ENERGY
Dr Bennett, bristling with energy, described the "three jobs of patients" -- presumably regardless of gender -- as being "empowered patients, effective advocates and engaged, informed citizens."

"I'm here to tell you I need your help," she told the audience hopefully, as though they might rise en masse and begin working toward a solution. "We've got to do a better job moving knowledge from research into public policy." None of the other panellists objected to that, but with less than 10 minutes each to state what perspective they were coming from, the issue had to be returned to the back burner when the hour drew to a close.

In an interview afterwards, Dr Bennett told NRM, "What we're up against are questions about the sustainability of our healthcare system and it's really scaring people." As a member of the profession, she's acutely aware of the role physicians have to play. "We have to underline how much disease prevention and health promotion doctors are doing every day in their offices. That's probably totally underestimated," she added.

Next, while busloads of teenage girls mobbed presentations on contraception and sex and health, more than 500 people sat down to a $70-per-plate luncheon with a keynote address by Dr Sheela Basrur, who just days later was appointed Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario. Acclaimed for her leadership during the SARS outbreak when she stood out as a voice of calm and reason, the admirable Dr Basrur said she simply tried to "inspire people to move on and do what they had to do."

Gail Sheehy, who was to speak at 2:30pm, flew in from New York in time to join the head table for lunch. The well-known journalist and author of Passages, the landmark bestseller that made "midlife crisis" a household term, was now promoting her new book, New Passages. In her talk later that afternoon, she pleased the crowd by suggesting people are taking longer to grow up, grow old, and die. She said the mid to late forties are the infancy of our second adulthood and -- good news! -- we can custom-design this one ourselves. "Find your passion and pursue it with your full heart and mind," she recommended and, all things considered, it seemed like the right idea at the end of the day.