Mission

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.

What WHV Plans in the Coming Year

  • 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 13th annual conference, From TV to Twitter: Media's Links to Healthy & Risky Behaviors, to be held on June 11, to increase understanding about how media influences girls, teens and young women’s health behaviors, positively and negatively, and how media, medical and educational professionals, parents and peers can increase media’s positive impacts and mitigate negative ones.

    Workshops to add to the education we provide at our annual conferences. We are working with attendees at our 2009 conference to identify programs they would like and will follow up the 2010 conference with similar outreach.

    Starting in the spring of 2010, we are planning workshops regarding the HPV vaccines (link to education page), to give parents, health and education professionals and others concerned about preventing cervical cancer information with which to make decisions about the vaccines.

  • 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 will bring together partners around the Commonwealth and highlight our shared efforts to improve the lives of Virginia’s females.

History

Women’s Health Virginia was established in 1999, as a women’s health initiative for Virginia, as described in a 1995 General Assembly resolution (HJR 514). During the four years after the resolution passed, WHV’s founders collected information from Virginia women’s, health and other community organization leaders about the needs of women and girls in their communities and how a “women’s health initiative” might address those concerns.

Women’s Health Virginia was incorporated as an independent, non-profit organization, in the belief that such an entity would best meet the needs they identified. It would provide education and information, conduct and encourage research and undertake other action to complement and enhance existing efforts. WHV would also work with other organizations in the public and private sector to improve communication and collaboration among non-profit, government and business organizations that shared its goals of improving women and girls’ health and well being.

Highlights in WHV’s History

1998 – 1st Annual Conference on Women’s Health Virginia's Challenge: Women's Wellness, inaugurating Women’s Health Virginia. Since then, WHV has hosted annual conferences on medical and non-medical issues affecting women and girls’ wellness, health behavior and use of health care.

1999 – Women’s Health Virginia is incorporated in Virginia, as the only non-governmental women’s health initiative and establishes its office in Charlottesville.

2001 – Women’s Health Virginia conducts groundbreaking survey of Virginia women to identify their health concerns, use and satisfaction with health information, health behavior challenges and other factors that influence their well being.

2001 – Women’s Health Virginia hosts Take Thyme for Women’s Health in Charlottesville, the first dinner in what is now an annual event to raise friends and funds for WHV.

2002 – Women & Girls’ Wellness Month is established by General Assembly resolution and inaugurated with the first Women & Girls’ Wellness Expo at the Capitol in Richmond, with Honorary Chair First Lady Lisa Collis.

2004 – Women’s Health Virginia honors founder and first Chair of WHV Judy Connally at Take Thyme for Women’s Health for her five years of leadership and inspiration.

2006 – Women’s Health Virginia hosts Listening Sessions for the Office of Women’s Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in preparation for its 2007 Minority Women’s Health Summit.