Led by second-year McGill University medical student Allison Engo, the Women’s Health Awareness Movement (WHAM) has partnered with ProACT OB/GYN and MUHC EndoCARES, two hospital-based organizations at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) to increase awareness of women’s health issues.
ProACT, led by Dr. Andrew Zakhari, is a collaborative outreach initiative that focuses on community involvement with a women’s health leaning, while MUHC EndoCARES, co-founded by Dr. Andrew Zakhari and Dr. Dong Bach Nguyen, is a clinic that provides treatment for patients with complex endometriosis, using a multi-disciplinary approach.
Through awareness campaigns and fundraising events, WHAM sheds light on critical women’s health issues including endometriosis, preeclampsia, uterine cancer, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. The medical student group’s mandate is to foster a community that advocates for the health needs of women and gender-diverse individuals.
Engo says the genesis of WHAM partly originates from family experience. “Growing up, I saw my mom experience the most painful period cramps. Often during her period, she’d be rolling on the floor in agony. She thought that she just got the short end of the stick and would tell me that ‘being a woman is painful,’ a fact I just had to accept. It was only when she had a C-section for my youngest sister that the doctor looked into her open pelvic cavity and realized that things were wrong. There were lesions everywhere, the tell-tale sign of endometriosis. This entire time, she had been living with a chronic debilitating condition, but because of lack of awareness of the condition, she never knew and never sought treatment. For that reason, when I started a women’s initiative as a medical student, I wanted to delve into endometriosis and many other women’s health issues that are not talked about enough,” Engo said. Endometriosis is a condition where cells similar to the lining of the uterus are found outside in the pelvic space, causing debilitating pelvic pain.
Engo notes that although we have made big strides in the medical and scientific community, there is still a lot of work to be done for the topic of women’s health. “I remember during one of my first physiology classes, we were taught about body fluid distribution. The caveat being that this only applied to the stereotypical 21-year-old 70-kg Caucasian male. I thought in that moment, as a small Asian girl, how does that apply to me? And how does that apply to the people around me? In fact, a lot of our current research and medical knowledge is based on this single population, which can lead to misrepresentation and misunderstandings in terms of diagnosis and treatment.”
Feeling the need to enact change within the medical system, Engo initiated a partnership with the EndoCARES endometriosis clinic and created the Women’s Health Awareness Movement (WHAM). “I wanted to then branch out because there are so many women’s health topics that do not receive the attention they should. For example, a heart attack can present completely differently in a woman compared to a man.” That is why the group organized the Heart to Heart campaign in February in partnership with the POWER Hub, an initiative led by Dr. Judy Luu, a specialist in women’s heart health.
With a firm set of goals established, WHAM has been conducting awareness campaigns to shed light on these issues. “We pride ourselves on providing resources and information that is peer-reviewed and reliable, so that people can read the posts and trust the content. As medical students with very diverse backgrounds in nursing, kinesiology, physiotherapy, physiology, we have the privilege of being able to research and collect high-quality information,” Engo says.
WHAM’s staff of 13 is intent upon growing its audience base. The group encourages those interested in women’s health to follow its Instagram (@wham.initiative) and Facebook (wham.initiative) pages to keep up to date on its outreach campaigns. “I think we have an interesting audience because we have the dual responsibility of educating both the general public as well as future health care providers so they can provide the most holistic care to their patients.”
WHAM is currently organizing a dragon boat fundraiser called Brave the Waves, to be held June 28th at the Lachine Canal. The proceeds to go the More Than a Cure (MTAC) breast cancer foundation. In September, they will participate in the yearly Beneva Marathon de Montreal, to raise funds for endometriosis care. They encourage anyone who is interested to participate in these sports events, no experience required.