Building Community and Transforming Knowledge: Histories of Women's Health Practitioners and Community-Based Health Services in 20th-Century Alberta, Canada

Emily B Kaliel, Karissa R Patton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

As new government health policy was created and implemented in the late 1910s and the late 1960s, women patients and health practitioners recognized gaps in the new health services and worked together to create better programs. This article brings the histories of the district nursing program (1919-43) and local birth control centres (1970-79) together to recognize women's health provision (as trained nurses or lay practitioners) as community-based and collaborative endeavours in the province of Alberta. The district nursing and birth control centre programs operated under different health policies, were influenced by different feminisms, and were situated in different Indigenous-settler relations. But the two programs, occurring half a century apart, provided space for health workers and their patients to implement change at a community level. Health practitioners in the early and late twentieth century took women's experiential knowledge seriously, and, therefore, these communities formed a new field of women's health expertise.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)427-460
Number of pages34
JournalCanadian Journal of Health History
Volume37
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Aug 2020

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Alberta
  • Ambulatory Care Facilities/history
  • Community Health Nursing/history
  • Contraception/history
  • Female
  • Feminism/history
  • Health Personnel/history
  • Health Policy/history
  • Health Services, Indigenous/history
  • History, 20th Century
  • Humans
  • Rural Health/history
  • Women's Health/history

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