WOMEN'S HEALTH VIRGINIA's mission is to enhance Virginia women and girls' health and well being through outreach, education and research.
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 concerning health problems that are usually addressed separately in treatment, education, health policy, and research.
- Takes a multidisciplinary approach which includes 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
WHV is launching its Young Women's Health Initiative in 2008 to address the needs of girls and young women with the goal of helping them achieve lifelong wellness. Our plans include:
- Research, including a survey of teens (modeled on our ground-breaking survey of adult women), to understand better their health concerns and their access to and use of health information and services. We will use the results to develop—and help others in communities around the state develop—educational programs and information that meet the needs we identify.
- Our 11th annual conference to raise awareness of challenges in addressing young women’s well being. The conference, to be held in June 2008, entitled, Stepping Over the Line—Young Women's Risk Taking, Time for Concern, will examine risk-taking behaviors, their consequences and successful programs that address these concerns.
- The April celebration of Women & Girls’ Wellness Month to highlight issues as well as programs and services that are addressing concerns of girls and young women.
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.