Journal Abstract: Identifying and Caring for Underserved Populations: Experience of the National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health

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Identifying and Caring for Underserved Populations: Experience of the National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health ( PDF file, 199Kb)

Abstract. From 1996 through 1998, 18 National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health (CoEs) were designated by the Office on Women's Health (OWH) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). These CoEs were charged with developing standards for compre-hensive, multidisciplinary, and culturally competent approaches to women's health. One spe-cific mandate to the CoEs was to address the needs of underserved women. This paper pre-sents the efforts of the CoE Racial and Ethnic Minority and Underserved Women Working Group to describe the work done within the CoEs to meet this mandate. One method of defin-ing underserved populations is the seven-point definition used in the current “Index for Pri-mary Care Shortage,” which categorizes underserved populations based on characteristics in-cluding race, ethnicity, geography, and health outcomes. The definition allows the local identification of underserved communities based on this group of variables. The analysis in-cluded in this paper focuses specifically on the CoEs' efforts to operationalize this defini-tion in order to meet the clinical care needs of women who are of low socioeconomic status (SES), racial or ethnic minorities, or non-English speaking. A brief review of the literature linking these characteristics to being underserved is provided, followed by examples of on-going activities at the 15 currently funded CoEs, to understand the needs of diverse women, to improve the quality of care provided to women, and to address healthcare needs of un-derserved women who meet this definition. Efforts to serve three additional underserved pop-ulations defined by age, sexual orientation, and disability status are also presented.

Reprinted with permission from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (Journal of Women's Health and Gender-Based Medicine, 2001 Vol 10 No 10, pp 937-952.) Single copies of this article may be downloaded for personal research and study.

Current as of May 2004