C Varcoe
Biographic Data
| ID | 48591 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Varcoe |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Varcoe |
| SIGNATURE | VARCOE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9090-2793 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 183 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Indigenous women’s health and data sovereignty
This article explores Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRM) in the context of Indigenous women’s health, integrating principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) and theoretical ideas from Critical Indigenous Feminism (CIF) and Red Intersectionality (RI). Building on ongoing critiques of dominant Eurocentric health research paradigms, we advocate for IRM to guide quantitative methods that typically exclude Indigenous Peoples and perspectives…
Effectiveness of nurse‐home visiting in improving child and maternal outcomes prenatally to age two years
BACKGROUND: We investigated the effectiveness of Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), a prenatal-to-age-two-years home-visiting programme, in British Columbia (BC), Canada. METHODS: For this randomised controlled trial, we recruited participants from 26 public health settings who were: <25 years, nulliparous, <28 weeks gestation and experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage. We randomly allocated participants (one-to-one; computer-generated) to interven…
Longitudinal effectiveness of a woman-led, nurse delivered health promotion intervention for women who have experienced intimate partner violence
Clinicaltrials.gov ID NCT03573778 (Registered on June 29, 2018)
Beyond individual factors
Communities like DTES, facing precarious housing conditions, disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and complex health and social challenges, necessitate a comprehensive and holistic approach to fire prevention and safety. Recognizing the interplay between housing instability, mental and physical health issues, unregulated toxic drug supply, drug criminalization, and structural inequities allows practitioners from various sectors to develop contextually d…
What About the Men? A Critical Review of Men’s Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a health problem affecting people of all genders and other social locations. While IPV victimization of cis-gendered women has been widely researched, how men conceptualized or experience IPV victimization, and the variations in their experiences of IPV, has not been thoroughly examined. In this critical review of men’s experiences of IPV, an extensive search of peer reviewed literature was conducted using multi…
Involuntary psychiatric treatment and the erosion of consent
The Mental Health Act (1996) is legislation that directs voluntary and involuntary psychiatric treatment for people experiencing mental health issues in British Columbia (BC), Canada. This critical discursive analysis explores how BC's Mental Health Act (1996) and the Guide to the Mental Health Act (2005) structure involuntary psychiatric treatment and illustrates how the discourses within these texts constitute people experiencing mental health …
The Ethics of Financial Incentivization for Health Research Participation Among Sex Workers in a Canadian Context
Research incentivization with sex workers is common, yet limited guidance exists for ethical incentives practice. We undertook a critical qualitative inquiry into how researchers ( n = 17), community services staff ( n = 17), and sex workers participating in research ( n = 53) perceive incentives in a Canadian context. We employed an interpretive thematic approach informed by critical perspectives of relational autonomy for analysis. Four themes …
Taking Practical Steps
Trauma- and violence-informed physical activity (TVIPA) is a feasible approach to improve access/engagement in physical activity for pregnant/parenting women with experiences of trauma. Through feminist participatory action research, 56 semistructured interviews were completed to understand TVIPA. Four themes were identified: (1) "I have to be on edge": Trauma and violence pervade women's lives, (2) "It should be mandatory that you feel safe": Em…
Indigenous Women's Resistance of Colonial Policies, Practices, and Reproductive Coercion
This analysis of urban Indigenous women's experiences on the Homeland of the Métis and Treaty One (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), Treaty Four (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada), and Treaty Six (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) territories illustrates that Indigenous women have recently experienced coercion when interacting with healthcare and social service providers in various settings. Drawing on analysis of media, study conversations, and policies, …
San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training as an Educational Intervention
The San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training Program is an Indigenous-led, policy-driven, and systems-level educational intervention to foster health equity and mitigate the effects of systemic racism experienced by Indigenous people in health and other sectors. Currently, San’yas is being scaled-up across Canada. This article focuses on the following: (a) the pedagogical underpinnings of San’yas grounded in transformational learning principle…
Public Health Nurses’ Professional Practices to Prevent, Recognize, and Respond to Suspected Child Maltreatment in Home Visiting
The purpose of this analysis was to understand public health nurses' experiences in preventing and addressing suspected child maltreatment within the context of home visiting. The principles of interpretive description guided study decisions and data were generated from interviews with 47 public health nurses. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings highlighted that public health nurses have an important role in the pri…
Towards health equity for people experiencing chronic pain and social marginalization
Equity-oriented responses to chronic pain would recognize pain not only as a biomedical issue but as a social justice issue. The EQUIP Framework is an approach to integrating trauma- and violence-informed care; culturally-safe care; and harm reduction in health care that may hold promise for being tailored to people experiencing pain and social marginalization
Gaps in health research related to sex work
Public health is tasked with addressing the urgent global priority of promoting the health and human rights of adults engaged in sex work and research is critical to support this endeavor. 'What' is studied, 'how' research is done, and 'who' is centered in this research is reflected in how research funding is allocated. In this article, we interrogate funding allocation for sex work-related health research in Canada. Drawing on critical perspecti…
"Healing on Both Sides"
This mixed methods study examined the impact of a prison–community partnership, entitled Work 2 Give. The partnership supports a program in which federally incarcerated men in Canada make items to donate to Indigenous communities. Qualitative interviews were conducted with participating men (n = 32), recipient community members (n = 29), and other prison and community stakeholders (n = 14). Selected outcomes (transfers to higher security, success…
Longitudinal impacts of an online safety and health intervention for women experiencing intimate partner violence
Clinicaltrials.gov ID NCT02258841 (Prospectively Registered on Oct 2, 2014)
Violence at the Intersections of Women’s Lives in an Urban Context
This article is based on an ethnographic study exploring Indigenous women's experiences of leaving intimate partner violence. Analysis draws attention to the contextual features of Indigenous women's lives that differentially shaped women's experiences of "leaving and/or staying" with an abusive partner. Our findings are identified and described across four intersecting thematic areas: (a) the context of state-Indigenous relations; (b) complex tr…
Growing Beyond Nutrition
Many Indigenous communities in Canada experience disproportionate rates of food insecurity and diet-related diseases impacted by historic and ongoing colonialism. Barriers to health and wellbeing associated with ongoing colonial processes also have resulted in inequities for Indigenous peoples within the criminal justice system. A prison garden program in British Columbia, Canada, attempts to address inmate rehabilitation and Indigenous community…
The British Columbia Healthy Connections Project
Registered August 24, 2012 with ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01672060 . Active not recruiting
Beyond stress and coping
Racial discrimination is primarily conceptualised and dealt with at the individual level in health research and practice. Most conceptualisations, and the measures which follow, are grounded in stress-coping theories thus reinforcing individual level understandings. This draws attention away from how structures and systems reproduce racial discrimination, and further supports the very racial categorisations upon which racism depends. The purpose …
Disruption as opportunity
This analysis suggests that organizations should anticipate and plan for various types of disruptions, while maximizing opportunities for ownership of the intervention by those within the organization. Our findings further suggest that equity-oriented interventions be paced for intense delivery over a relatively short time frame, be evaluated, particularly with data that can be made available on an ongoing basis, and explicitly include a harm red…
A tailored online safety and health intervention for women experiencing intimate partner violence
Clinicaltrials.gov ID NCT02258841 (Registered on Oct 2, 2014)
Enhancing health care equity with Indigenous populations
BACKGROUND: Structural violence shapes the health of Indigenous peoples globally, and is deeply embedded in history, individual and institutional racism, and inequitable social policies and practices. Many Indigenous communities have flourished, however, the impact of colonialism continues to have profound health effects for Indigenous peoples in Canada and internationally. Despite increasing evidence of health status inequities affecting Indigen…
Development of a brief measure of intimate partner violence experiences
Objectives Approaches to measuring intimate partner violence (IPV) in populations often privilege physical violence, with poor assessment of other experiences. This has led to underestimating the scope and impact of IPV. The aim of this study was to develop a brief, reliable and valid self-report measure of IPV that adequately captures its complexity. Design Mixed-methods instrument development and psychometric testing to evolve a brief version o…
Disrupting the Continuities Among Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and Child Welfare
In Canada, it is estimated that 3 times as many Indigenous children are currently in the care of the state compared to when the residential schools’ populations were at their peak. It is imperative that action be taken. This article explores the continuities among residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and child welfare in Canada today. In particular, we examine how colonial and neocolonial discourses operate through and justify these policies a…
Missing Pathways to Self-Governance
This article explores how current policy shifts in British Columbia, Canada highlight an important gap in Canadian self-government discussions to date. The analysis presented draws on insights gained from a larger study that explored the policy contexts influencing the evolving roles of two long-standing urban Aboriginal health centres in British Columbia. We apply a policy framework to analyze current discussions occurring in British Columbia an…
Modelling the effects of intimate partner violence and access to resources on women's health in the early years after leaving an abusive partner
Reinterpretations Across Studies
The authors undertook a qualitative meta-analysis of their own studies to examine the context of health care and health care relationships. They "translated" selected concepts and metaphors from each study through those of the other studies, yielding new interpretations. In this article, they present their methods, discuss possible applications of this approach, and examine some issues that remain unresolved in the area of qualitative meta-analys…
Women and Violence
In Canada the idea that social entitlements are important components of citizenship and equality is currently being undermined by neo-liberal state values, expressed in federal and provincial policy shifts that favour self-sufficiency and economic competitiveness over a strong welfare state. Although this trend is dangerous for all populations marginalized through poverty, racism and disability, it is especially dangerous for women who are attemp…
Patterns and Predictors of Service Use Among Women Who Have Separated from an Abusive Partner
Using baseline data from a survey of 309 Canadian women recently separated from an abusive partner, we investigated patterns of access to health, social, legal, and violence-specific services and whether abuse history and social and health variables predict service use. We compared rates of service use to population rates, and used logistic regression to identify determinants of use. Service use rates were substantially higher than population est…
Harms and benefits
Gold mining on Mayan-Mam territory
This article examines the influence of a large-scale mining operation on the health of the community of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala. An anti-colonial narrative approach informed by participatory action research principles was employed. Data collection included focus groups and one-on-one interviews from August to November of 2011. Over this period, we interviewed 15 Mam Mayan men and 41 women (n = 56) between the ages of 18 and 64 including …
Harm reduction, methadone maintenance treatment and the root causes of health and social inequities
Using our research findings, we explore Harm Reduction and Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) using an intersectional lens to provide a more complex understanding of Harm Reduction and MMT, particularly how Harm Reduction and MMT are experienced differently by people dependent on how they are positioned. Using the lens of intersectionality, we refine the notion of Harm Reduction by specifying the conditions in which both harm and benefit arise…
Leaving ≠ Moving
Access to safe and affordable housing is a key concern for women leaving abusive partners. Yet little is known about women's housing patterns around leaving. In this community sample, approximately equal numbers of women did not move, moved once, and moved two or more times during the transition period around leaving. Overall, moving patterns were associated with housing type and suitability, economic circumstances, and severity of violence. This…
Health Care Relationships in Context
A qualitative meta-analysis of three ethnographic studies conducted by the original investigators of those studies yielded new understandings of the dynamics of health care relationships in context. Through this analysis, the authors show that moral judgments and decision making in health care are highly relational and contextual. The use of power to compel health care providers and patients to comply with organizational practices is shown as fun…
Patterns of Cumulative Abuse Among Female Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
Drawing on the Women's Health Effects Study, a community sample of women (N = 309) who recently left an abusive partner, this study examines patterns of cumulative abuse experiences over the life course, their socioeconomic correlates, and associations with a range of health outcomes. Latent class analysis identified four groups of women with differing cumulative abuse profiles: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Dominant, Child Abuse and IPV, All F…
Attributing Selected Costs to Intimate Partner Violence in a Sample of Women Who Have Left Abusive Partners
Selected costs associated with intimate partner violence were estimated for a community sample of 309 Canadian women who left abusive male partners on average 20 months previously. Total annual estimated costs of selected public- and private-sector expenditures attributable to violence were $13,162.39 per woman. This translates to a national annual cost of $6.9 billion for women aged 19–65 who have left abusive partners; $3.1 billion for those ex…
Violence at the Intersections of Women’s Lives in an Urban Context
This article is based on an ethnographic study exploring Indigenous women's experiences of leaving intimate partner violence. Analysis draws attention to the contextual features of Indigenous women's lives that differentially shaped women's experiences of "leaving and/or staying" with an abusive partner. Our findings are identified and described across four intersecting thematic areas: (a) the context of state-Indigenous relations; (b) complex tr…
Producing children in the 21st century
The purpose of this article is to identify the implications of commonly held ideologies within theories of child development. Despite critiques to doing so, developmental theory assumes that children's bodies are unitary, natural and material. The recent explosion of neuroscience illustrates the significance of historical, social and cultural contexts to portrayals of brain development, offering the opportunity for a critical departure in thinkin…
Wisdom and Influence of Elders
Beyond stress and coping
Racial discrimination is primarily conceptualised and dealt with at the individual level in health research and practice. Most conceptualisations, and the measures which follow, are grounded in stress-coping theories thus reinforcing individual level understandings. This draws attention away from how structures and systems reproduce racial discrimination, and further supports the very racial categorisations upon which racism depends. The purpose …
Bingo halls and smoking
Taking Practical Steps
Trauma- and violence-informed physical activity (TVIPA) is a feasible approach to improve access/engagement in physical activity for pregnant/parenting women with experiences of trauma. Through feminist participatory action research, 56 semistructured interviews were completed to understand TVIPA. Four themes were identified: (1) "I have to be on edge": Trauma and violence pervade women's lives, (2) "It should be mandatory that you feel safe": Em…
Indigenous Women's Resistance of Colonial Policies, Practices, and Reproductive Coercion
This analysis of urban Indigenous women's experiences on the Homeland of the Métis and Treaty One (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), Treaty Four (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada), and Treaty Six (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) territories illustrates that Indigenous women have recently experienced coercion when interacting with healthcare and social service providers in various settings. Drawing on analysis of media, study conversations, and policies, …
Can ethnicity data collected at an organizational level be useful in addressing health and healthcare inequities
The quality of ethnicity data collected within healthcare organizations is often unreliable, particularly for people from racialized or visible minority groups, who are most at risk, seriously limiting the usefulness of the data. Quality measures for collecting data reflecting ethnocultural identity in specific healthcare organizations may be warranted - but only if mechanisms exist or are developed for linking ethnicity with measures of perceive…
Patterns of Medication Use Among Women Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
Making a Difference’
Reflections on Deconstructing Harry, or when is Good Art Bad Science
Involuntary psychiatric treatment and the erosion of consent
The Mental Health Act (1996) is legislation that directs voluntary and involuntary psychiatric treatment for people experiencing mental health issues in British Columbia (BC), Canada. This critical discursive analysis explores how BC's Mental Health Act (1996) and the Guide to the Mental Health Act (2005) structure involuntary psychiatric treatment and illustrates how the discourses within these texts constitute people experiencing mental health …
Expanding Economic Costing in Health Care
Olena Hankivsky, Jane Friesen, Colleen Varcoe, Fiona MacPhail, Lorraine Greaves, Charmaine Spencer, Expanding Economic Costing in Health Care: Values, Gender and Diversity, Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 257-282
Transitions in Nurse-Patient Interactions
The combination of videotapes and qualitative ethological methods offers researchers investigating the interactions between health care providers and patients the opportunity to gain rich, complex understandings of the interaction dynamics that lead to enhanced health care outcomes. Verbal and nonverbal behaviors of patients and nurses were analyzed using videotapes of caregiving. Using techniques of qualitative ethology, the purpose of this stud…
Reflections on Deconstructing Harry, or when is Good Art Bad Science
Reinterpretations Across Studies
The authors undertook a qualitative meta-analysis of their own studies to examine the context of health care and health care relationships. They "translated" selected concepts and metaphors from each study through those of the other studies, yielding new interpretations. In this article, they present their methods, discuss possible applications of this approach, and examine some issues that remain unresolved in the area of qualitative meta-analys…
Health Care Relationships in Context
A qualitative meta-analysis of three ethnographic studies conducted by the original investigators of those studies yielded new understandings of the dynamics of health care relationships in context. Through this analysis, the authors show that moral judgments and decision making in health care are highly relational and contextual. The use of power to compel health care providers and patients to comply with organizational practices is shown as fun…
Expanding Economic Costing in Health Care
Olena Hankivsky, Jane Friesen, Colleen Varcoe, Fiona MacPhail, Lorraine Greaves, Charmaine Spencer, Expanding Economic Costing in Health Care: Values, Gender and Diversity, Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 257-282
Women and Violence
In Canada the idea that social entitlements are important components of citizenship and equality is currently being undermined by neo-liberal state values, expressed in federal and provincial policy shifts that favour self-sufficiency and economic competitiveness over a strong welfare state. Although this trend is dangerous for all populations marginalized through poverty, racism and disability, it is especially dangerous for women who are attemp…
Patterns of Medication Use Among Women Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
Making a Difference’
Bingo halls and smoking
Harms and benefits
Modelling the effects of intimate partner violence and access to resources on women's health in the early years after leaving an abusive partner
Exploring the promises of intersectionality for advancing women's health research
Women's health research strives to make change. It seeks to produce knowledge that promotes action on the variety of factors that affect women's lives and their health. As part of this general movement, important strides have been made to raise awareness of the health effects of sex and gender. The resultant base of knowledge has been used to inform health research, policy, and practice. Increasingly, however, the need to pay better attention to …
Women's health and use of crack cocaine in context
Wisdom and Influence of Elders
Enhancing measurement of primary health care indicators using an equity lens
The current emphasis on achieving greater equity through PHC, the continued calls for the renewal and strengthening of PHC, and the use of monitoring and performance indicators highlight the relevance of ensuring that there are more accurate methods to capture the complex work of PHC organizations
Leaving ≠ Moving
Access to safe and affordable housing is a key concern for women leaving abusive partners. Yet little is known about women's housing patterns around leaving. In this community sample, approximately equal numbers of women did not move, moved once, and moved two or more times during the transition period around leaving. Overall, moving patterns were associated with housing type and suitability, economic circumstances, and severity of violence. This…
Attributing Selected Costs to Intimate Partner Violence in a Sample of Women Who Have Left Abusive Partners
Selected costs associated with intimate partner violence were estimated for a community sample of 309 Canadian women who left abusive male partners on average 20 months previously. Total annual estimated costs of selected public- and private-sector expenditures attributable to violence were $13,162.39 per woman. This translates to a national annual cost of $6.9 billion for women aged 19–65 who have left abusive partners; $3.1 billion for those ex…
Harm reduction, methadone maintenance treatment and the root causes of health and social inequities
Using our research findings, we explore Harm Reduction and Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) using an intersectional lens to provide a more complex understanding of Harm Reduction and MMT, particularly how Harm Reduction and MMT are experienced differently by people dependent on how they are positioned. Using the lens of intersectionality, we refine the notion of Harm Reduction by specifying the conditions in which both harm and benefit arise…
Closing the health equity gap
These evidence- and theoretically-informed key dimensions and strategies provide direction for PHC organizations aiming to redress the increasing levels of health and health care inequities across population groups. The findings provide a framework for conceptualizing and operationalizing the essential elements of equity-oriented PHC services when working with marginalized populations, and will have broad application to a wide range of settings, …
The Intersecting Risks of Violence and HIV for Rural Aboriginal Women in a Neo-Colonial Canadian Context
An ethnographic study looking at the intersecting risks of violence and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for rural women shows that the neo-colonial and racist context of Canadian society creates particular challenges for Aboriginal women. This article focuses on the experiences of the Aboriginal women who took part in the study. These women’s experiences of violence occurred within a rural context of poverty and declining economic resources, a…
Can ethnicity data collected at an organizational level be useful in addressing health and healthcare inequities
The quality of ethnicity data collected within healthcare organizations is often unreliable, particularly for people from racialized or visible minority groups, who are most at risk, seriously limiting the usefulness of the data. Quality measures for collecting data reflecting ethnocultural identity in specific healthcare organizations may be warranted - but only if mechanisms exist or are developed for linking ethnicity with measures of perceive…
Producing children in the 21st century
The purpose of this article is to identify the implications of commonly held ideologies within theories of child development. Despite critiques to doing so, developmental theory assumes that children's bodies are unitary, natural and material. The recent explosion of neuroscience illustrates the significance of historical, social and cultural contexts to portrayals of brain development, offering the opportunity for a critical departure in thinkin…
Gold mining on Mayan-Mam territory
This article examines the influence of a large-scale mining operation on the health of the community of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala. An anti-colonial narrative approach informed by participatory action research principles was employed. Data collection included focus groups and one-on-one interviews from August to November of 2011. Over this period, we interviewed 15 Mam Mayan men and 41 women (n = 56) between the ages of 18 and 64 including …
Missing Pathways to Self-Governance
This article explores how current policy shifts in British Columbia, Canada highlight an important gap in Canadian self-government discussions to date. The analysis presented draws on insights gained from a larger study that explored the policy contexts influencing the evolving roles of two long-standing urban Aboriginal health centres in British Columbia. We apply a policy framework to analyze current discussions occurring in British Columbia an…
Equip Healthcare
The multiple case study design provides an ideal opportunity to study the contextual factors shaping the implementation, uptake and impact of our tailored intervention within diverse PHC settings. The EQUIP intervention illustrates the complexities involved in enhancing the PHC sector's capacity to provide equity-oriented care in real world clinical contexts
Medicine (36 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Political science (31 works) · Nursing (25 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Public health (20 works) · Environmental health (16 works) · Intimate Partner and Family Violence (16 works) · Poison control (16 works) · Suicide prevention (16 works)