2025 Canadian Women's Heart Health Summit

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5th Candian Women's Heart Health Summit

Advancing women’s heart, brain and vascular health together.

April 25 - 26, 2025 | Ottawa, ON

This is a clinical and scientific conference inducing knowledge exchange among a variety of stakeholders including primary care providers, cardiologists, neurologists, gynecologists, pharmacists, nurses, cardiac rehabilitation providers, allied healthcare providers, researchers, policy-makers, community partners, and people with living and lived experience (PWLLE). The CWHHS will be submitted for accreditation approval in the fall of 2024.

Reflecting on the past, empowering the present, and shaping the future.

Proudly hosted by the University of Ottawa Heart Institute's Canadian Women's Heart Health Centre, and Heart & Stroke, the Canadian Women’s Heart Health Summit is the only event of its kind and has become the national reference point for health professionals seeking up-to-date knowledge of women’s heart, brain and vascular health.

Building on the success of the previous four Summits, we have assembled national and international experts and stakeholders to further advance women’s heart, brain, and vascular health. Together, we will transform and enhance Canadian women’s lives through research, awareness, policy development, and care.

2025 Summit Objectives

  1. Reflect on the progress made in sex and gender-based research and practice since the first Summit in 2016;
     
  2. Unite key collaborators to improve heart, brain, and vascular health among women.  
     
  3. Identify emerging and future areas, gaps and health disparities in research and clinical practice for heart, brain, and vascular conditions affecting women.
     
  4. Champion equity-promoting strategies to enhance the adoption of evidence-based research and clinical practices for heart, brain, and vascular health in women.

When we talk about women, we mean ALL women.

Sex and Gender are complementary concepts but they are not interchangeable. Sex describes biology, such as hormones and chromosomes, while Gender describes our lived experience and how we move through the world.

It is important that we understand these differences as they impact the amount of clinical knowledge we have specific to women, the appropriateness of clinical best practices used to treat women (such as diagnostic procedures and interventions), how women seek knowledge and care, and so much more.

When we talk about women, we mean all women. 

People who identify as women make up just over half of the population in Canada and we choose to take an intersectional approach to understanding health inequities faced by women and how to address them.

We understand that women’s health is shaped by many different and overlapping factors, including sex, indigeneity, race, ability, sexual orientation, education, income, geographic location and more. This includes cisgender and transgender women, and non-binary people. 

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