The judges of the Heather Trickey Essay Prize are delighted to announce the results of our 2022 award. Our joint winners are The Pelvic Partnership and Angeline O’Connor, writing on the subject of pelvic girdle pain in pregnancy.
The prize seeks to build on the work of Dr Trickey, who died in July 2021 and who was involved in designing the award. It encourages work that aims to find common ground and practical responses in sometimes difficult areas of women’s reproductive health and rights. We were also looking for essays that spoke to a underexplored or contested area, sought to surface women’s voices and experiences, and suggested fresh solutions.
We chose these two essays, as we felt they absolutely articulated these key themes.
Pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain is a very common and recognised condition, yet its debilitating impact on women during and after pregnancy seems to remain completely unappreciated. We felt this was an area of significant unmet need which deserves reappraisal, with a particular focus on developing an evidence base on what works to underpin more reponsive and consistent services for women.
We will support The Pelvic Partnership and Angeline to take their ideas forward.
Alongside these essays, we are also publishing two highly commended submissions.
Emillie Belmore’s essay explores the impact of sexual violence on female reproductive health, specifically looking to overcome gaps in previous research which has tended to focus only on psychological effects.
Katherine Butcher brings a unique perspective to her discussion of law reform in the complex and contested area of foetal death due to third party recklessness.
We know Heather would have been thrilled at the diversity of issues covered this year, and all of the authors’ demonstrable commitment to improving experiences and outcomes for women.
We are hugely grateful to everyone who took part and look forward to opening the award again next year.
Clare Murphy, Julia Sanders, Simon Brindle and Jessica Figueras
The winners of the 2022 Heather Trickey Essay Prize
Sarah Fishburn and Jen Campbell, The Pelvic Partnership: Pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain is one of the most common, painful and debilitating conditions that you’ve never heard of
Angeline O’Connor: PGP, me and the one-in-five women affected
Highly commended
Emillie Belmore: Silent Failings: Sexual Violence and Female Reproductive Health
Katherine Butcher: The Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929: A case for reforming the law on foetal death due to third party recklessness
The Heather Trickey Essay Prize 