BWH is the state’s largest birthing hospital, and it plays a unique role in developing and implementing innovative women’s health programs. Women’s health is viewed as more than a service of primary, obstetric, and chronic care for women’s reproductive and broader health concerns. It is also seen as a way to ensure healthy families and thus healthy communities.
Women from low-income neighborhoods who are disadvantaged
by their educational status, language, employment, economic status, immigrant status, race/ethnicity, and/or other personal characteristics face significant barriers to maintaining their health and that of their families. Promoting programs that improve the health of women through health education, social support, educational opportunities, and employment reduces these barriers and helps women to care for themselves and their families.
The overall vision for BWH’s community health initiatives is driven
by a desire to equalize health status and opportunity among underserved populations including women and their families. Concerned about alarming disparities in health among Boston’s core urban population, BWH’s Center for Community Health and Health Equity’s (CCHHE) community health initiatives have focused on these populations. Higher infant mortality rates for Black babies, lower rates of adequate prenatal care for Black and Latina women, higher rates of breast and cervical cancer among Black women, higher percentages of Black and Latina adolescents who become mothers, and the impact these health concerns have on the health of families and children are among the health disparities driving the CCHHE’s community benefit focus. The BWH chapter describes these initiatives in more detail.
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