Sex and gender differences have a profound impact on people living with brain disorders, and many, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), epilepsy and concussion, can impact women throughout their lives. These neurological conditions bear down heavily on not just women’s quality of life, but also the delivery of care that they receive and the stigma they face.
Women’s Brain Health, the third talk in OBI’s ‘Your Brain Health’ series, will touch on these issues and more. Join us as we uncover research on brain disorders that affect women’s lives and meet the leaders who are creating change.
Speakers:
- Gena Meldazy, who lives with epilepsy, is an advocate for epilepsy awareness as a member of the EpLink Community Advisory Council. By day, Gena works as a digital marketing professional.
- Halina (Lin) Haag, a PhD candidate and faculty member with the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University and a research trainee at the Acquired Brain Injury Research Lab at the University of Toronto. Lin is exploring the gendered experiences of brain injury and the barriers and facilitating factors influencing mental health, return to work, and social integration encountered by brain injured women survivors of intimate partner violence. She is also someone with lived experience of traumatic brain injury.
- Dr. Sarah Morrow, an Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences at Western University and Director of the London MS Clinic (London Health Sciences Centre). Sarah is also on the steering committee of the International MS Cognition Society and of MS in the 21st Century, an international collaboration with the aim of defining how multiple sclerosis treatment and standard of care should look.
Moderator – Rackeb Tesfaye, science communicator, CBC Radio Science columnist and PhD candidate in the Integrated Program of Neuroscience at McGill University.
Presented in collaboration with Western University’s BrainsCAN, a cognitive and behavioral neuroscience research initiative that aims to transform the way brain diseases and disorders are understood, diagnosed and treated.