Some farm women’s groups found a call for health research projects came up too suddenly this fall.
The results of the first year of research won’t be known until April, but the deadline for a second round of proposals passed Nov. 30, 1998 for the Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence, one of five in Canada.
Shannon Storey, of the National Farmers Union, said the group had planned to put in a proposal but the lead time was only one month and right after harvest. The NFU was going to re-submit an idea that was not approved in 1998. However, Storey said, “some criteria had changed, the research person we had in mind wasn’t available. So we didn’t (apply).”
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Doris Pattison, president of the Saskatchewan Women’s Institutes, said her group also declined to put in a proposal.
“We seem to be pretty busy this winter with going on-line and a lot of board training is needed and we have a lot of programs with the women’s secretariat. Perhaps next winter.”
The Saskatchewan Women’s Agricultural Network submitted another proposal, to go along with the two it backed last year that were approved. Only two of the 11 proposals in the first year applied to rural women. The rest dealt with urban, immigrant and aboriginal women’s health concerns.
SWAN executive secretary Noreen Johns said work started last month on a project about the health impacts resulting from the erosion of support programs for farm women.
SWAN’s other project interviewed 56 rural women, some with “heart-wrenching stories,” who care for ailing spouses and family members.
“They’re out there in isolation and who gives a damn?”
Johns said after the research is done, SWAN wants to develop a plan to help farm women.
Kay Wilson, of the Prairie Women’s Health Centre Saskatoon office, expects the centre to fund up to eight projects in 1999 to a maximum of $15,000 each.
Wilson said the deadline was set months in advance of the May funding announcement to allow a two-stage evaluation of the ideas by a team of academics and scientists.
The centre has another three years of funding from the federal government to research issues that affect the health of Saskatchewan and Manitoba women.
New this year are five grants of $2,000 each to help fund women’s groups to develop research proposals for upcoming years.
