Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need

The goal of the Raising Women’s Voices project is to raise women’s voices in local, state and national debates over health care reform, so that women’s perspectives about their health care needs and those of their families can be powerfully articulated, genuinely considered and incorporated into health care reform policy.

Raising Women’s Voices is a collaboration between the Avery Institute for Social Change, the National Women’s Health Network and The MergerWatch Project.

Together we will:

• Engage women who are leaders of diverse communities in identifying their health care needs and those of their families.
• Develop a vision for a health care system that would meet the identified needs of these women and their families.
• Mobilize and support a network of women leaders who can advocate at the local, state and national level for health coverage expansion programs that meet women’s health needs, including for comprehensive reproductive health care, and the needs of their families.
• Create partnerships between this network and the major consumer health organizations that are working for health coverage expansion at the state and national level, so that there is an ongoing exchange of information and perspectives, and development of mutual respect;
• Identify likely obstacles to inclusion of comprehensive women’s health and reproductive health services in health coverage expansion plans - such as opposition from conservative religious leaders or cost concerns - and develop recommended methods of addressing these obstacles;
• Inform and educate key health policymakers at the state and national level about the importance of women’s perspectives on health care reform and the need to include comprehensive women’s health care in health coverage expansion plans.

To learn more about the goal of Raising Women’s Voices, please visit our website where you can:

• Download our webinars on health care reform
• Register for our national conference in April 2008

If you are interested in learning more about Raising Women’s Voices and what you can do in your own community, please contact us.