Six-site push under way to enhance women's services
Six-site push under way to enhance women’s services
New programs put in place with federal money
A Web site focusing on women’s health infor-mation is being developed by the public education project staff at Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in Philadelphia as one of six National Centers for Excellence in Women’s Health established last year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The information on the Web will cover diseases of interest to women, such as osteoporosis. It will have separate sections that target specific populations such as adolescents, mid-life women, mature women, and minorities. "We’ll have an inventory of patient education materials on the Web site, whether print or video, and directions about where people can get the materials locally or where they can order them. We expect that health professionals will use that section too, to locate things they can give their patients," says Carol Hansen Montgomery, PhD, director of the Institute for Academic Informatics at Allegheny University.
The site will have a local focus, listing community events on women’s health care issues, but women across the nation will find useful information there. All materials on the site will be reviewed by women health professionals at Allegheny.
The women’s health center at Allegheny and the six other centers selected by HHS in the fall of 1996, are to serve as national models for improving health care for American women. The centers, each getting an equal share of a $1 million grant, will integrate health care services, research programs, public education and health care professional training and create links with health care services in the community. The grant money can be applied to existing projects or used to create new programs. (To learn about some of the education programs the institutions already have in place, see story, above.)
All the centers will provide a one-stop shopping for women’s health care, where they will have access to comprehensive services and resources in one place.
"Our new national focus on women’s health, reflected in numerous initiatives in the public and private sectors, is brightening the prospects for a healthier future for American women. The purpose of the National Centers of Excellence is to facilitate this progress through increased knowledge and improved treatment and prevention of diseases in women," says Susan J. Blumenthal, MD, MPA, deputy assistant secretary for women’s health and assistant Surgeon General.
In addition to Allegheny University, the national Centers of Excellence will be located at Magee-Womens Hospital, Pittsburgh; The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus; University of California at San Francisco; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; and Yale University, New Haven, CT. (For contact information, see list, at right.)
Magee-Womens Hospital is initiating a quick risk assessment process for women who come in to see their physician. The assessment will determine if the woman is a candidate for smoking cessation, a mammography, a bone density screening, a weight control program, or a cholesterol screening. During a six month period, the assessment will be evaluated to determine if it is an effective way to motivate women to access preventive health care, says Margaret McLaughlin, PhD, associate director of Magee-Womens Research Institute. They hope to determine whether offering all the health care services in one center motivates women to take preventive action or if an advocate such as the physician is the catalyst, she explains.
One group of women will be given the assessment by a health care professional at a clinic where all the services are available. Each woman’s physician also will encourage them to take advantage of the services in the areas for which they were at high risk, such as smoking cessation. A second group will take the assessment on their own at a center where all the services are available and receive physician advice. The third group will be encouraged by their physician to take advantage of the preventive services, but they won’t be readily available. They will be given an information sheet on where to go to access the various services.
The Ohio State University Medical Center is studying several ways to make resources on women’s health readily available to the community, says Julie Amling, MHA, director of Women’s Health Services and the National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health at the medical center. At their two existing centers for health information, they will create an area for women’s health where free pamphlets and handouts will be available. All the books and video tapes that pertain to women’s health will be marked with a color-coded dot, so they will be easy to locate throughout the library.
In the community, they will furnish video tapes and written materials on women’s health to various outreach clinics that target the underserved, minority population. Also, they have begun to work with librarians at the neighborhood libraries who will post table tents and flyers about the extensive women’s health information available at The Ohio State University Medical Center resource rooms. They also will provide the librarians with a list of materials on women’s health to purchase for the public library bookshelves.
[Editor’s note: For more information on the National Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health project, contact: U.S. Public Health Services’ Office on Women’s Health, 200 Independence Avenue, S.W., RM 712-E, Washington, DC 20201. Telephone: (202) 690-7650. Fax: (202) 401-4005.]
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