Margaret Wheatley once wrote “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” That is exactly what community-based health researchers enable their communities to do. Community based researchers engage community members to find the problems and research the solutions for the benefit of all. But who supports these researchers?

“Gathering Community-Based Health Researchers” is a free daylong conference where participants will:

• learn about the local and provincial resources they can access;
• investigate how sex and gender influence health; and
• meet other community-based researchers in their region.

Natalie Clark, a faculty member in the School of Social Work and Human Service at Thompson Rivers University in collaboration with other faculty, students and community organizations like the Kamloops Women’s Resource Group Society, is co-hosting this free, inclusive gathering on April 7th, 2008 at the Henry Grube Education Centre. Participants are invited to both the morning session “Untangling Sex and Gender” (10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.) and the afternoon session “Learning from CBR” (1 p.m. to 4 p.m.).

“To really help a community, you need research based in the community,” says Clark. “Organizing this workshop is a great opportunity to find out what people are doing in our region and to enable community members to get more involved in addressing the issues that affect them.”

The Women’s Health Research Network has a mandate to support Community-Based Research, and according to Dr. Colleen Reid, Research Director of the Women’s Health Research Network, many health issues are social justice issues, and many social justice issues are gendered. We want to support work that will benefit women and men in British Columbia.

This gathering will help community leaders and researchers learn about the resources that exist to support their work and how to include a gender-lens on the issues they investigate. Through the day, community members and researchers will have a chance to meet each other and discover the variety of research conducted in the Kamloops-area.

To register for the morning and/or afternoon session, please contact Erica at ericabouffioux@gmail.com. The sessions will be held at the Henry Grube Education Centre at 245 Kitchener Crescent in Kamloops, BC on April 7, 2008.

Community-Based Researcher gatherings are funded by the Women’s Health Research Network (www.whrn.ca) which is one of eight Health of Population Networks funded by the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.

Contact: Natalie Clark, School of Social Work and Human Service, (p) 250.377.6248