As we observe International Women's Day and the 2022 theme #BreakTheBias, there is an opportunity to celebrate women's global social, economic, cultural, and political achievements.
We wish to congratulate our colleague Dr. Astrid Christoffersen-Deb on her new role of Medical Director in the BC Women's Hospital + Health Centre's Population and Global Health Program. This new program supports the hospital in its mission to integrate activities along the healthcare continuum of prevention, promotion, care, and action on equity and the social determinants of health.
Aside from her role as Medical Director, Astrid is also an obstetrician-gynecologist and anthropologist with a particular interest in global health. After graduating medical school at McGill University, Astrid completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Oxford University. Before moving to UBC and BC Women's Hospital in 2017, she spent seven years in Kenya for the University of Toronto. She served as the Field Director in Reproductive Health for AMPATH, the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare, and co-founded the AMPATH Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Innovation Team at Moi University in Kenya.
Astrid is passionate about all things postpartum and is co-chairing the 4th annual Global Health Conference co-hosted by BC Children's and Women's Hospital's Centre for International Child and the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. The theme of this year's conference is "42 Days: Reimagining the Postpartum and Postnatal Period" and features a wide-ranging panel of speakers from public health, epidemiology, pediatrics, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, who will present from their fields of experience from Canada, the US, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Pakistan, and Guatemala. In addition to co-chairing, Astrid will be speaking as a panelist, presenting on the theme "Moving beyond mortality to equity and justice." She is excited to finally get a large group of people together to talk about this often-neglected period in women's lives.
Learn more about the conference here: https://www.bcchr.ca/global-health-conference
