The lives of women and babies matter: A call for action in Indigenous and First Nations women’s health and wellbeing

Abstract

Compared to Indigenous and First Nations women, non-Indigenous women, particularly those from the majority colonizing population, are privileged with substantial advantages in health and wellbeing.Women's health encompasses, but is not limited to, both maternity and gynecology. Non-Indigenous women and their babies are more likely to live through pregnancy and birth and less likely to suffer harm than Indigenous and First Nations families. These disparities are part of the wider privilege colonizers possess across all of the structural determinants of health, including housing, income, education, health services, justice, and transport. These disparities, and the resultant privileges they afford, are unjust and unacceptable. Now, more than ever, there are opportunities for change. The Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 has brought into international focus the racism experienced by both black and Indigenous and First Nations peoples. This has inspired and re-invigorated calls for change in broader society to improve the health and wellbeing of Indigenous and First Nations peoples. In the words of 1 published in this special issue, "there can be no forward movement without acknowledgement of the impacts of systemic racism at all levels of health care". We applaud the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) for supporting this special journal edition of IJGO, titled: "A Call for Action in Indigenous and First Nations Women's Health and Wellbeing". It is a call for action from everyone who works in women's health, and a call to listen to the voices of Indigenous women, researchers, and clinicians. This special issue brings together strengths-based research which presents voices and actions that can be heard and taken forward in order to make a difference. The issue highlights the voices of those usually not heard in research, in clinical care, and in health service design, [1][2][3][4][5][6] and calls out the silence and invisibility commonly imposed on Indigenous women. [7][8][9][10][11] This Special Issue includes calls from Indigenous researchers through Indigenous-led and -conducted research; and calls from Indigenous women, either through telling the stories of their health and healthcare journeys, 1,12,13,14 or through risk factors and health outcomes being made visible in quantitative data, 8,15,16 or through looking at existing literature in new ways. 7,9,10,11

Ethnic Differences in Preferences for Lifestyle Intervention among Women after Childbirth: A Multi-Methods Study in Australia

“…Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were reported for each ethnic group. Considering Indigenous women have different cultural barriers and health needs [ 45 ] compared with the other Oceanian women (i.e., Australian and New Zealander), sensitivity analysis was conducted by excluding the data on Indigenous women to test the robustness of the main results, while presenting the data on this group separately. Statistical analysis was performed using SAS 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA).…”