Multidisciplinary Health Models for Women

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New! Literature Review on Effective Sex- and Gender-Based Systems/Models of Care

Despite the many accomplishments made in the early 1990s, few women's health centers have actually provided comprehensive, interdisciplinary, integrated health services across the life span. The DHHS Office on Women's Health (OWH) recognized the important role that women's health centers could play in correcting these fragmented women's health efforts, and is now trying to change this narrowly focused paradigm. The OWH has developed five innovative national model programs for comprehensive, integrated, interdisciplinary, and coordinated women's health care; health care professional education; research; community outreach and public education; and, faculty development/opportunities for women.

The five programs are:

• The National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health (CoE)
• The National Community Centers of Excellence in Women's Health (CCOE)
• The CoE and CCOE Ambassador for Change Program
• The CoE Region VIII Demonstration Projects (R8Demo)
• The Rural Frontier Women's Health Coordinating Centers (RFCC)

The five programs are located in leading women's health centers across the contiguous U.S. states, Puerto Rico and Hawaii (see map). The ultimate goal of all five programs is to improve the health of all women across the life span and among diverse populations, and to address the inequities in women's health. These five programs are developing standards of excellence in women's health care, research, leadership, training and education. They are also helping women take more responsibility for their own health through active patient education and outreach, and by making use of newly emerging communication technologies. Additionally, the five programs address racial and ethnic disparities in health access and outcomes, and they reach a more diverse population of women than do most traditional women's health centers.

These five programs are primarily concerned with a dramatic systems change in the framework for thinking about women's health. Ultimately, it is our hope that the successes of these five programs will encourage all women's health centers to adapt this paradigm model of comprehensive, multidisciplinary, integrated women's health care. The OWH wants to create a new approach to health care that can have profound effects on the health of women in this century.

Current as of March 2007