The national survey of women's health centers: Current models of women-centered care

his paper presents descriptive results from the first national survey of women s health centers in the United States.The term "women s health center ' has been used since the 1960s to refer to various types of organizations that provide health services designed for women.Despite growing interest in women's health and recognition of the need for new models of care delivery for women, relatively little is known about the women's health centers currently operating.1 The National Survey of Women's Health Centers was conducted in 1994 to provide a profile of contemporary organizational models of women-centered care. BACKGROUNDPrior to the 1960s, health care organizations providing services exclusively to women consisted mainly of women's hospitals, which first appeared in the early 1800s, and family planning clinics, which date to the 1920s.The number of women's hospitals has been decreasing, reflecting a more general decline in the number of specialty hospitals; the American Hospital Association (AHA) reported that there were 50 freestanding hospitals in 1987 exclusively admitting women, 2 but by 1994 there were only 12 remaining in the United States.Family planning centers today are sponsored by private agencies such as Planned Parenthood and by public health departments.Henshaw and Torres 3 estimate that in 1992, there were 2,614 public and private agencies providing family planning services in between 5,460 and 5,960 clinical sites, and a majority of agencies provided clinical services such as sexually transmitted disease screening or treatment to men as well as women.The term "women's health center" originated in the Women's Health Movement of the 1960s and early 1970s and referred to freestanding centers designed by women as alternatives to mainstream health care.4~ Although