Bilkis Vissandjee

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Université de Montréal

Background End-of-life periods are often characterised by suboptimal healthcare use (HCU) patterns in persons aged 65 years and older, with negative effects on health and quality of life. Understanding care trajectories (CTs) and transitions in this period can highlight potential areas of improvement, a subject yet only little studied. Objective T...

Symptoms of the Post-COVID-19 Condition are often non-specific making it a challenge to distinguish them from symptoms due to other medical conditions. In this study, we compare the proportion of emergency department patients who developed symptoms consistent with the World Health Organization’s Post-COVID-19 Condition clinical case definition betw...

This systematic integrative review provides a unique pioneering perspective on community support practices in social, community, and cooperative housing, improving our understanding of the practice and its outcomes. Two research questions guided this work: 1) What are the community support practices in social and community housing serving individua...

Background Most studies of disparities in birth and postnatal outcomes by parental birthplace combine all immigrants into a single group. We sought to evaluate heterogeneity among immigrants in Canada by comparing birth and postnatal outcomes across different immigration categories. Methods We conducted a population-based retrospective study using...

Importance: Symptoms of Post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC) are non-specific and can occur due to other medical conditions, making it a challenge to distinguish PCC from other health conditions. Objective: To compare the proportion of emergency department (ED) patients who developed symptoms consistent with PCC between those who tested positive for Sever...

Objectives Chronic pain (CP) is a poorly recognised and frequently inadequately treated condition affecting one in five adults. Reflecting on sociodemographic disparities as barriers to CP care in Canada was recently established as a federal priority. The objective of this study was to assess sex and gender differences in healthcare utilisation tra...

The importance of seeing race as a socially constructed idea continues to produce unfair differences between humans and establishes power relations that lead to injustice and exposure to death. Since the racial justice movement in early 2020, there has been a heightened awareness of, and increased interest in, addressing historic racial disparities...

Background Leadership competence is important to ensure the provision of safe and high-quality care in hospitals. Purpose The aim was to demonstrate the feasibility of enhancing the perceived leadership competence of nursing students through an innovative health education strategy, consisting of a student-led dedicated education unit (DEU) informe...

Objectives: Intimate partner violence and sexual violence organizations such as women's shelters play a crucial role in advancing gender equality in Canada. COVID-19 has challenged how such organizations operate. This study explored how intimate partner violence and sexual violence organizations in Canada have been affected by COVID-19 and the con...

FGM/C type IIIb in a 16-month old girl from Mali ( a , b ), admitted with acute retention of urine and acute renal failure, Mali.

Femawle Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or injury to the female genital organs that are medically unnecessary (i.e. performed primarily for cultural or religious reasons), especially when done without the consent of the affected person. Such procedure...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic may increase risk of intimate partner and sexual violence and make relevant services less accessible. This study explored the perspectives of intimate partner and sexual violence workers across Canada on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the survivors with whom they work. Methods Using a qualitative descriptiv...

Labial and Clitoral adhesion. Examples of convergence of inner labia under the glans and intersection with clitoral hood.

Pictures without FGM/C and without lesions. This chapter will help the physician:

Informed consent is essential to ensuring a trauma-informed, survivor-centered, ethical process that respects the (developing) autonomy of a patient.

Please note that when WHO refers to labia minora and majora such terms are now replaced by inner and outer labia.

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic may increase risk of intimate partner and sexual violence and make relevant services less accessible. This study explored the perspectives of intimate partner and sexual violence workers across Canada on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the survivors with whom they work. Methods: Using a qualitative descriptive...

Background International and migrant students face specific challenges which may impact their mental health, well-being and academic outcomes, and these may be gendered experiences. The purpose of this scoping review was to map the literature on the challenges, coping responses and supportive interventions for international and migrant students in...

Background: International and migrant students face specific challenges which may impact their mental health, well-being and academic outcomes, and these may be gendered experiences. The purpose of this scoping review was to map the literature on the challenges, coping responses and supportive interventions for international and migrant students in...

The combined forces of economic globalization and international migration have resulted in specific challenges to palliative care systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has and is still greatly affecting elder populations as well as those across the age continuum living with long-standing chronic conditions or with pre-existing diverse unmet needs. While h...

La télésanté connait un essor fulgurant en ce contexte de pandémie. Or, en cette période d'insécurité mondiale, la santé préventive reprend ses droits. En période de déconfinement, la discipline et la cohésion sociale peuvent se relâcher. Cette enquête sociale vise à décrire un programme d'intervention à distance, réalisé en partenariat avec des lo...

This study used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) (2005–2014) to analyze the relationships between sexual orientation item nonresponse and interview language, conversation language, migration status (migrant-non-migrant), cultural background, sex, age, education level, and marital status in a cross-sectional sample over 18 (n =...

Human rights language has become a common method of internationally denouncing violent, discriminatory or otherwise harmful practices, notably by framing them as reprehensible violations of those fundamental rights we obtain by virtue of being human. While often effective, such women's rights discourse becomes delicate when used to challenge practi...

Article de formation sur la violence conjugale destiné en premier lieur aux infirmières et infirmiers du Québec. L'article présente un rapide état des connaissances sur la problématique, en s'intéressant au contexte de la pandémie de la covid-19. Des pistes d'interventions sont ensuite proposées, avec différents exemples et vignettes cliniques.

Population health intervention research (PHIR) is a particular field of health research that aims to generate knowledge that contributes to the sustainable improvement of population health by enabling the implementation of cross-sectoral solutions adapted to social realities. Despite the ethical issues that necessarily raise its social agenda, the...

L'immigration constitue une transition ayant des répercussions considérables sur la santé et le bien-être des personnes immigrantes pouvant donner lieu à des virages dans une trajectoire de vie. Le contexte dans lequel ces expériences sont vécues requiert une sensibilité aux dynamiques, aux interactions, aux trajectoires, aux situations de vulnérab...

Objectives: Growing attention has been given to considering sex and gender in health research. However, this remains a challenge in the context of retrospective studies where self-reported gender measures are often unavailable. This study aimed to create and validate a composite gender index using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CC...

We seek to clarify and assess the underlying moral reasons for opposing all medically unnecessary genital cutting of female minors, no matter how severe. We find that within a Western medicolegal framework, these reasons are compelling. However, they do not only apply to female minors, but rather to non-consenting persons of any age irrespective of...

La recherche interventionnelle en santé des populations (RISP) est un champ particulier de la recherche en santé. Elle vise à produire des connaissances qui contribuent à améliorer durablement la santé à l’échelle des populations en favorisant l’implantation de solutions intersectorielles adaptées aux réalités sociales. Malgré les enjeux éthiques q...

La recherche interventionnelle en santé des populations (RISP) est un champ particulier qui vise à produire des connaissances qui contribuent à améliorer durablement la santé des populations et l'équité en santé en facilitant l'implantation de solutions intersectorielles adaptées aux réalités sociales. Malgré les enjeux éthiques que suscite nécessa...

The Immigration Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) in Canada has set the stage for inclusive policy. Health literacy, language spoken and gender are among the selected differential resettlement determinants of refugees’ access to health resources and opportunities. Gender based analysis (GBA) is a priority for IRPA for promoting inclusive settlement pol...

LGB (lesbian, gay and bisexual) members experience situations related to perceived discrimination when accessing health care resources. In addition, the disclosure of their sexual orientation, the assumptions of heterosexuality, providers’ limited knowledge, lack of LGB-sensitive resources and referral networks are among the most commonly documente...

Ceci n’est pas un rapport; c’est un appel à l’action. C’est le cri du coeur d’une table ronde née de la conviction profonde qu’il est inacceptable que, dans une grande métropole d’un des pays les plus riches, un si grand nombre de personnes soit encore aux prises avec une pauvreté aussi désespérée. Plutôt que de simplement mandater une énième étude...

This is not a report; it is a call to action. It is a heartfelt appeal from a round table established with the firm belief that, in a major city in one of the richest countries in the world, it is unacceptable that so many people still grapple with such desperate poverty. Rather than simply mandate yet another study that will sit on a shelf, the CD...

(Abstracted from Lancet 2018;391:1718–1735) Canada’s universal publicly funded health care system, known as Medicare, was founded on the principle that access should be determined by need rather than ability to pay. Medicare is an importance source of collective pride in Canada as a universal health coverage model that provides access to physicians...

Access to health care based on need rather than ability to pay was the founding principle of the Canadian health-care system. Medicare was born in one province in 1947. It spread across the country through federal cost sharing, and eventually was harmonised through standards in a federal law, the Canada Health Act of 1984. The health-care system is...

Diabetes has emerged as a global epidemic of the 21st century. Approximately 65.1 million women and men have Diabetes in India (IDF 2013), which will rise to 123 million by 2035. Sustained modification in behavior and basic lifestyle practices such as diet and exercise is required to prevent complications and manage T2DM. These determinants have be...

Current knowledge • For people living with HIV infection in India, stigma is a pervasive reality and the greatest barrier to accessing treatment, quality of life and survival. • However, women and men experience stigma differently. Despite typically contracting the disease through marital sexual relations, married monogamous women are also subject...

Background Based on an analysis of published literature, this paper provides an over-view of the challenges associated with delivering on the right to access quality health care for international migrants to industrialized countries, and asks which group of professionals is best equipped to provide services that increase health and legal literacy....

Objective: To examine provider- and patient-related factors associated with diabetes self-management among recent immigrants. Design: Demographic and experiential data were collected using an international survey instrument and adapted to the Canadian context. The final questionnaire was pretested and translated into 4 languages: Mandarin, Tamil...

As African states have entered the global trend for women’s emancipation, many have then set up a “national gender policy”. However, that process seems to vary by country and by degree of cultural integration. The purpose of this article is to point out the obstacles blocking the implementation of the gender policy and negatively affect its social...

Despite broadening consideration of sex- and gender-based issues in health research, when seeking information on how sex and gender contribute to disease contexts for specific health or public health topics, a lack of consistent or systematic use of terminology in health literature means that it remains difficult to identify research with a sex or...

Active tuberculosis (TB) disease can impose substantial morbidity, while treatment for latent TB infection (LTBI) has frequent side effects. We compared health-related quality of life (HRQOL) between persons diagnosed and treated for TB disease, persons treated for LTBI, and persons screened but not treated for TB disease or LTBI, over one year fol...

Purpose: To estimate health utility derived from the Short Form-36 (SF-36) questionnaire and Standard Gamble instrument for persons diagnosed and treated for tuberculosis (TB) disease, those diagnosed and treated for latent TB infection (LTBI), and those screened but not treated for TB disease or LTBI over the year following their diagnosis/initia...

We analyzed the impact of a requirement introduced in December 2010 that all applicants to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research indicate whether their research designs accounted for sex or gender. We aimed to inform research policy by understanding the extent to which applicants across health research disciplines accounted for sex and gender....

We used data from the 1991-2006 Canadian Census Mortality and Cancer Follow-up Study to compare all-cause mortality for immigrants with that of the Canadian-born population. The study addressed two related questions. First, do immigrants have a mortality advantage over the Canadian-born? Second, if immigrants have a mortality advantage, does it per...

Female Genital Cutting (FGC) anchored in a complex socio-cultural context becomes significant at the interface of access of health and social services in host countries. The practice of FGC at times, understood as a form of gender-based violence, may result in unjustifiable consequences among girls and women; yet, these practices are culturally eng...

Many migrants do not speak the official language of their host country. This linguistic gap has been found to be an important contributor to disparities in access to services and health outcomes. This study examined primary care mental health practitioners' experiences with linguistic diversity. 113 practitioners in Montreal completed a self-report...

Pour le 20 % de la population québécoise dont la langue maternelle n’est pas le français, la communication dans cette langue est susceptible de créer des difficultés dans ses rapports avec le système de santé et de services sociaux. En effet, la présence de barrières linguistiques dans l’offre de services peut avoir des répercussions négatives impo...

For the 20% of Québec’s population whose mother tongue is not French, communication in this language can create difficulties when dealing with the health and social services system. The presence of linguistic barriers in available services can have major negative repercussions on the health of patients. To ensure that anglophones and other linguist...

Cette contribution propose une réflexion sur les défis associés au droit à l’accès à des soins de qualité dans une perspective de justice sociale pour les personnes en situation d’immigration. Le but de cet article est de mettre en exergue certains défis de prise en compte de l’interaction de diverses influences lorsqu’il s’agit d’arrimer la questi...

Our objective was to explore self-management practices, health services use and information-seeking for type 2 diabetes care among adult men and women from four recent immigrant communities in Toronto. A structured questionnaire was adapted for the Canadian context and translated into 4 languages. A total of 184 participants with type 2 diabetes-13...

Introduction Notre objectif était d'explorer les pratiques d'auto-traitement, l'utilisation des services de santé et la recherche d'information sur le diabète de type 2 chez les adultes des deux sexes issus de quatre communautés d'immigrants récents de Toronto. Méthodologie Un questionnaire structuré a été adapté au contexte canadien et traduit en...

Objectives: This report describes a one‐year study entitled Girls’ Perspectives on Girls’ Groups and Healthy Living, designed to capture the perspectives of girls on what they get from girls’ groups and to compare what they say with known promising practices in sex/gender specific health promotion, as identified by the literature. The objectives of...

Le développement d’instruments de mesure sensibles et appropriés à la réalité des diverses communautés ethnoculturelles représente une nécessité incontournable dans le contexte multiethnique actuel. Le but de cet article est de faire part de certains défis qui se sont présentés lors de l’élaboration d’un instrument de mesure culturellement congruen...

The foreign-born population bears a disproportionate health burden from tuberculosis, with a rate of active tuberculosis 20 times that of the non-Aboriginal Canadian-born population, and could therefore benefit from tuberculosis screening programs. We reviewed evidence to determine the burden of tuberculosis in immigrant populations, to assess the...

Canadian immigrants have lower overall cancer risk than the Canadian-born population. Less is known about risks for immigrant subgroups and site-specific cancers. Linked administrative data sets were used to compare cancer incidence between subgroups of immigrants to Canada and the general Canadian population. The study involved 128,962 refugees an...

This study describes prevalence of diabetes among immigrants and health service utilization among diabetic immigrants in British Columbia (BC) and Quebec (QC). Immigrants to BC and QC between 1985 and 1999 were identified. Using age-standardized rate ratios, they were compared with a matched comparison group with respect to their diabetes prevalenc...

This article reviews empirical evidence and ethical norms in cross-linguistic nursing. Empirical evidence highlights that linguistic barriers between nurses and patients can perpetuate discrimination and compromise nursing care. There are significant organizational and relational challenges involved in ensuring adequate use of interpreters by nurse...

Amina, a 20 year-old woman, living in a small rural village of Morocco, is expecting her first baby. Her labour started when she was at term while her husband was far away; her mother-in-law was assisting her. After almost 24 hours of difficult labour, seeing the distress that Amina was going through, the mother-in-law called for her second son in...

This paper examines the compensation process for work-related injuries and illnesses by assessing the trajectories of a sample of immigrant and non-immigrant workers (n = 104) in Montreal. Workers were interviewed to analyze the complexity associated with the compensation process. Experts specialized in compensation issues assessed the difficulty o...

Socially constructed ideas of gender norms and values attached to sexuality need to be considered when aiming to build the young people's capacity to adopt HIV preventive behaviours. We conducted ten focus groups and sixteen individual interviews to explore sexual norms among youth in Bamako. Premarital sex, multiple partnering, condom use and tran...

Résumé Cette étude qualitative visait à mettre à l’essai une démarche pour la création d’une approche de négociation entre le personnel des services de soutien à domicile et des proches-aidantes d’un parent âgé, en vue de formuler des recommandations pour une offre de services culturellement sensibles. L’approche repose sur un cadre conceptuel de n...

This paper describes differences in health and functional status among older men and women and attempts to anchor the explanations for these differences within a lifecourse perspective. Seven health outcomes for men and women 60 years and older from seven Latin American and Caribbean cities are examined, using data from the 2000 SABE survey (Salud,...

It is estimated that female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced on more than 2 million girls every year in Africa and Middle East. With growing migratory movements, the issue of FGM crosses borders into countries were such practices are uncommon, against women's rights and illegal. Canadian health services are faced with an increasing number of w...

In Canada, the care provided by families occurs in an increasingly multiethnic context. Against this backdrop, the present qualitative study aims to explore the needs/expectations and solutions not only of (female) natural caregivers of an elderly relative hailing from Haiti (presented in terms of tracking cases) but also of remunerated home care p...

In Canada, the care provided by families occurs in an increasingly multiethnic context. Against this backdrop, the present qualitative study aims to explore the needs/expectations and solutions not only of (female) natural caregivers of an elderly relative hailing from Haiti (presented in terms of tracking cases) but also of remunerated home care p...

The aim of this paper was to examine, via a scoping review, how the literature focusing on immigrant women's health, based on selected criteria, has been able to capture not only sex and gender differences but also the other socially grounded determinants of health. Using selected health databases as well as a diversity of keywords, a final sample...

Objetivo. Identificar y documentar las barreras de acceso a los servicios de salud en la población indígena de Rabinal en Guatemala. Material y métodos. Se privilegió el análisis cualitativo y la recopilación de datos se realizó en Rabinal durante dos meses (Guatemala). Se realizaron quince entrevistas semi dirigidas a indígenas achís y cinco entre...

To identify and document access barriers to health care services for the indigenous population in Rabinal, Guatemala. A qualitative analysis was used. Over a period of two months, 20 semi-directional interviews were conducted in Rabinal, Guatemala: 15 with Achis indigenous people and five with health professionals. A focus group was done to verify...

As a general rule, almost all of Quebec’s workers who suffer work injuries will be taken care of by the worker compensation system. However, access to worker compensation is difficult for many workers, including immigrant workers. This article describes the evaluation process and the criteria used for assessing the difficulties encountered by worke...

This paper explores selected underlying themes related to rural Gujarati women's political participation. An analysis of this data subset provides an understanding of how gender operates in rural Gujarat with respect to women's social mobility as mediated by dimensions such as age, education, socio-economic status and household dynamics. Through qu...

Around the world, midwives are increasingly being called upon to provide skilled care for pregnant women and newborns. In Morocco, there is a persistent lack of professional recognition of midwifery, which is consistent with widespread gender inequality and women's low status. Midwifery training in Morocco has evolved since the 1960s into a three-y...

Around the world, midwives are increasingly being called upon to provide skilled care for pregnant women and newborns. In Morocco, there is a persistent lack of professional recognition of midwifery, which is consistent with widespread gender inequality and women's low status. Midwifery training in Morocco has evolved since the 1960s into a three-y...

From our households and into our communities, from independent States to international governing bodies, gender operates as a construct of evolving aspects of women's identities and is a medium through which expectations are prescribed, social norms are formed and power relations are negotiated. Gender constructs that impede women's access to the p...

This study examines mortality patterns among Canadian immigrants, including both refugees and non-refugees, 1980-1998. Records of a stratified random sample of Canadian immigrants landing between 1980-1990 (N = 369,936) were probabilistically linked to mortality data (1980-1998). Mortality rates among immigrants were compared to those of the genera...