WOMEN'S HEALTH VIRGINIA's mission is to enhance Virginia women and girls' health and well being through education, research, and collaboration.

How WHV Achieves Its Goals

The organization

• Focuses attention on the health needs of women and girls in Virginia.
• Addresses women and girls' health comprehensively and as a continuous process. WHV takes a broad perspective towards health problems that are usually addressed separately in treatment, education, health policy, and research.
• Uses a multidisciplinary approach to include economic, educational, cultural, environmental, social, and medical issues.
• Connects people and organizations, in the public and private sector and from around the state, to work together. WHV involves individuals from business, academia, government and non-profit agencies, community organizations, and individuals who care about their own health and that of their families.

Our Current Activities

• Research

  We will be conducting focus groups with teens in various parts of the state to learn more about their understanding of health issues that affect them, how they are getting and using health information, to whom they turn when they have questions about health and wellness issues, and, if they want to learn more about such issues, how best to get them the information and help them select reliable sources.

  We will use the results to develop and help other Virginia organizations develop educational programs and information that meet the needs we identify.

• Education

  Our 14th annual conference, Play or Peak Performance--Gains & Pains for Active Girls & Athletes was held in Charlottesville on Friday June 10. Virginia and national experts examined the importance of and trends in physical activity and sports participation for girls, the physical and mental health and social and educational impacts (positive and negative) of such activities, and ways that health and educational professionals, parents and coaches can increase healthier outcomes. We are planning workshops on these topics later this year.

  We are continuing to develop workshops and make the DVDs and other materials available from our 2010 conference From TV to Twitter: Media's Links to Healthy & Risky Behaviors, to reach audiences who were not able to attend the program or want a deeper discussion of the topics we covered. In the fall of 2011, we plan to host workshops based on the June conference. We are drawing up plans for programs specially designed for health and educational professionals, parents and coaches.

  We will continue to work with other organizations to develop new educational opportunities by participating in planning and providing speakers.

• Collaboration

  We will continue to build the Women’s Health Virginia network of organizations and individuals who share our goal of enhancing women and girls’ health and well-being. We will work with these community partners to raise awareness of issues that affect women and girls and services and programs in Virginia that are addressing these concerns.

  The April celebration of Women & Girls’ Wellness Month brought together partners around the Commonwealth and highlighted our shared efforts to improve the lives of Virginia’s females.