223093 Impact of Regional Offices on Women's Health community level projects on the health of women and girls across the lifespan

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Megan Hiltner, MPH , Health Services Division, John Snow, Inc. (JSI), Denver, CO
Background: In September 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Regional Offices on Women's Health (OWH) in partnership with John Snow, Inc. (JSI) engaged local communities across the United States and U.S.-affiliated territories to improve the health status of women and girls through implementation of targeted projects in their communities. Approximately 600 projects were funded to conduct health fairs, health awareness events, and workshops focusing on OWH priority areas including reducing health disparities, promoting heart health, violence prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, and healthy lifestyle and nutrition. These events empowered local leaders to identify the women's health needs in their population and be responsible for community health improvement.

Purpose: The purpose of this session is to present an analysis of the short-term impacts of Regional OWH-sponsored community level projects in six different areas: HIV/AIDS awareness, heart health, healthy lifestyle and nutrition, violence prevention, reducing health disparities, and National Women's Health Week events.

Methods: A review of self-reported project data submitted by the funded projects was conducted. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed.

Results: Case examples reflect that there was increased awareness of health issues affecting women and girls throughout their life spans and vulnerable populations were reached with disease prevention and women's health promotion messages from Regional OWH-funded projects.

Conclusions: Local projects supported by the Regional OWH addressed social justice and considerably impacted the health of women and girls in their communities through health education, encouraging preventive screening, and training.

Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Chronic disease management and prevention
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs

Learning Objectives:
1. Describe the methods used to collect information from Office of Women's Health funded projects. 2. Discuss case examples of unique projects implemented in the ten Health and Human Services regions. 3. Discuss the short-term impacts of local projects across the Office of Women's Health priority areas.

Keywords: Women's Health, Community-Based Health Promotion

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to present because I oversee training and technical assistance projects supporting federal grantees with maternal, child and adolescent health programming.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 2043.0: Individual, social, and community aspects of women's health across the lifespan