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August 17 is Nationwide Nonprofit Day.
HealthyWomen’s unique founder, Violet Bowen-Hugh, M.D., was a drive of nature. Born and raised in Clendenin, West Virginia, Bowen-Hugh got here from an underprivileged background, which impressed her to create a spot the place ladies, regardless of their socioeconomic standing, had entry to dependable well being info. As an academically gifted girl who graduated on the prime of her class, Bowen-Hugh was the primary girl in her household to finish highschool. She went on to attend school and, upon her commencement, started a profession in accounting.
Bowen-Hugh made a very good life for herself, however she had a deeply rooted want to assist others. And in the summertime of 1954, she realized that want may now not be denied. Impressed by a feminine doctor — one in all solely 48 feminine docs within the state — who was treating her nephew within the hospital, she determined to observe her dream and attend medical faculty.
After graduating, Bowen-Hugh turned a resident on the Columbia Hospital for Girls, one in all solely seven ladies’s hospitals on the time, the place she practiced obstetrics and gynecology, ultimately changing into head of the division. Nonetheless not able to cease dreaming, Bowen-Hugh continued preventing for greater high quality healthcare for girls and advocated for extra analysis to be performed on well being points particular to ladies.
It was this advocacy that alerted Bowen-Hugh to the dearth of scientifically correct details about ladies’s healthcare wants, which led to the creation of the Nationwide Girls’s Well being Useful resource Heart (NWHRC) in 1988. The NWHRC realized Bowen-Hugh’s dream of offering ladies with medically vetted, trusted details about their healthcare issues and to reply questions on diagnoses and supply ideas for wholesome residing.
The NWHRC started as a 1-800 quantity that ladies may name for details about medical situations they’d been identified with and common well being recommendation. The girl who answered the telephone was Beth Battaglino.
Just like Bowen-Hugh’s origin story, Battaglino started by acquiring levels in enterprise and political science however all the time knew she wished to be a nurse. To get her foot within the door, she utilized for a volunteer coordinator place at Columbia Hospital for Girls, however the recruiter noticed one thing particular in Battaglino and really helpful she work for the NWHRC as a substitute.
Through the day, Battaglino labored as a part of this well being useful resource for girls, and she or he studied to be a registered nurse at evening. Over time, the group flourished and started branching out into new methods to tell its target market. One among its hottest choices was the Nationwide Girls’s Well being Report, a bimonthly e-newsletter, which centered on well being situations distinctive to ladies. The e-newsletter was a precursor to our widespread Actual Girls, Actual Tales collection, as ladies shared their experiences with the featured analysis in every version. Together with the e-newsletter, Battaglino additionally created a database of present well being matters, sources, organizations and assist teams that the NWHRC may present its callers, which turned the template for the HealthyWomen.org web site.
Beth Battaglino speaks on the fifth Annual HealthyWomen Occasion, March 2022
The mid-’90s noticed a push to combine ladies’s well being and wellness into current way of life publications like Cosmopolitan and Redbook, and the normalization of discussing ladies’s well being matters allowed the NWHRC to make a reputation for itself. Nonetheless, the late ’90s introduced monetary woes to Columbia Hospital and its closing was imminent. Recognizing that the NWHRC was nonetheless a necessary useful resource, Battaglino and two of her colleagues developed a marketing strategy to take over the NWHRC and maintain it working — a plan that paved the way in which for HealthyWomen to come back into existence. Because the small however mighty group of girls labored to maintain the NWHRC afloat, they acquired a name from representatives at Johnson and Johnson who wished to be taught extra concerning the group and the way the 2 corporations may companion. Battaglino’s ensuing pitch led to a grant that not solely saved the useful resource middle in existence however allowed the NWHRC to be much more bold than earlier than. Recognizing that the general public and the media’s curiosity in well being and wellness wasn’t abating anytime quickly, Battaglino created a advertising and marketing plan that positioned the middle as a go-to useful resource for girls’s way of life manufacturers and magazines and well being editors. This led to partnerships with manufacturers like Prevention and Mattress, Bathtub & Past.
As time and know-how superior, the NWHRC transitioned into the web house by changing into the primary ever web site that comprehensively addressed ladies’s well being and wellness points, and in 2009, it rebranded as HealthyWomen. Since then, the positioning was acknowledged by Forbes Journal as a prime web site for girls three years in a row, and Oprah Journal acknowledged the positioning as its prime ladies’s well being web site in 2010.
Over time, Battaglino’s position at HealthyWomen has developed, and she or he turned CEO in 2006, positioning HealthyWomen because the go-to well being useful resource for girls.
For greater than three a long time, ladies have trusted HealthyWomen’s extremely researched and dependable info to have interaction, educate and empower them.
It’s been an honor to be a company that ladies depend on — and one the HealthyWomen group hasn’t taken flippantly at any time in our historical past.
Take heed to our CEO discuss extra concerning the historical past and evolution of HealthyWomen.
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