About WOW
What do older women rank as their top unmet health care needs? If health care professionals and community organizations are made aware of these needs, how can they change practices to better meet them? What kinds of tools will be needed, and where will they come from?
The WOW Knowledge Translation Project has set out to answer these questions. Dr. Cara Tannenbaum’s WOW study asked 2,500 older women in Canada which of their health needs were not being met. Three of the themes most often mentioned were:
- Screening and treating urinary incontinence
- Counselling about memory loss (or perceived memory loss)
- Exercise strategies to address concerns such as falls and functional declin
Top 10 Unmet Priorities
The Canadian Women’s Health Network, in partnership with the Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal, has undertaken this pan-Canadian project with support from the Canadian Institute for Health Research’s Knowledge-to-Action funds. The WOW KT Project will translate knowledge into action and improve health care delivery for older women in the high priority areas identified in the WOW research.
The goal is to find effective means to translate the research we have done into tangible results – we want women to be able to articulate their needs and clinicians to learn what questions they ought to be asking. We will focus on filling the knowledge gap for women, the lack of screening by their health care providers, and the lack of information sources for both women and their providers in three important areas identified in the WOW study.
