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 data. As an academically gifted girl who graduated on the high 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 might now not be denied. Impressed by a feminine doctor — one in every of 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 Ladies, one in every of solely seven ladies’s hospitals on the time, the place she practiced obstetrics and gynecology, finally turning into head of the division. Nonetheless not able to cease dreaming, Bowen-Hugh continued combating for greater high quality healthcare for girls and advocated for extra analysis to be accomplished on well being points particular to ladies.
It was this advocacy that alerted Bowen-Hugh to the shortage of scientifically correct details about ladies’s healthcare wants, which led to the creation of the Nationwide Ladies’s Well being Useful resource Middle (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 suggestions for wholesome dwelling.
The NWHRC started as a 1-800 quantity that ladies might name for details about medical situations they’d been recognized with and normal well being recommendation. The lady who answered the telephone was Beth Battaglino.
Much like Bowen-Hugh’s origin story, Battaglino started by acquiring levels in enterprise and political science however all the time knew she needed to be a nurse. To get her foot within the door, she utilized for a volunteer coordinator place at Columbia Hospital for Ladies, however the recruiter noticed one thing particular in Battaglino and beneficial she work for the NWHRC as an alternative.
Throughout the day, Battaglino labored as a part of this well being useful resource for girls, and he or she studied to be a registered nurse at evening. Over time, the group flourished and started branching out into new methods to tell its audience. Certainly one of its hottest choices was the Nationwide Ladies’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 Ladies, Actual Tales sequence, 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 subjects, assets, organizations and help teams that the NWHRC might 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 present life-style publications like Cosmopolitan and Redbook, and the normalization of discussing ladies’s well being subjects 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 return into existence. Because the small however mighty workforce of ladies labored to maintain the NWHRC afloat, they obtained a name from representatives at Johnson and Johnson who needed to be taught extra in regards to the group and the way the 2 firms might 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 life-style manufacturers and magazines and well being editors. This led to partnerships with manufacturers like Prevention and Mattress, Bathtub & Past.
As time and expertise superior, the NWHRC transitioned into the net house by turning 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 location was acknowledged by Forbes Journal as a high web site for girls three years in a row, and Oprah Journal acknowledged the location as its high ladies’s well being web site in 2010.
Over time, Battaglino’s function at HealthyWomen has developed, and he or she 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 data to interact, educate and empower them.
It’s been an honor to be a corporation that ladies depend on — and one the HealthyWomen workforce hasn’t taken evenly at any time in our historical past.
Take heed to our CEO discuss extra in regards to the historical past and evolution of HealthyWomen.
Add Comment