August 17 is Nationwide Nonprofit Day.
HealthyWomen’s authentic founder, Violet Bowen-Hugh, M.D., was a power 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, irrespective of their socioeconomic standing, had entry to dependable well being info. As an academically gifted lady who graduated on the high of her class, Bowen-Hugh was the primary lady in her household to finish highschool. She went on to attend school and, upon her commencement, started a profession in accounting.
Bowen-Hugh made life for herself, however she had a deeply rooted need to assist others. And in the summertime of 1954, she realized that need may now not be denied. Impressed by a feminine doctor — certainly one of solely 48 feminine medical doctors within the state — who was treating her nephew within the hospital, she determined to comply with her dream and attend medical college.
After graduating, Bowen-Hugh grew to become a resident on the Columbia Hospital for Girls, certainly one of solely seven ladies’s hospitals on the time, the place she practiced obstetrics and gynecology, finally changing into head of the division. Nonetheless not able to cease dreaming, Bowen-Hugh continued preventing for larger high quality healthcare for ladies 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 shortage 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 dwelling.
The NWHRC started as a 1-800 quantity that girls may name for details about medical circumstances they’d been identified with and common well being recommendation. The lady 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 at all times 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 Girls, 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 ladies, 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. Certainly one of its hottest choices was the Nationwide Girls’s Well being Report, a bimonthly publication, which targeted on well being circumstances distinctive to ladies. The publication was a precursor to our fashionable Actual Girls, Actual Tales sequence, as ladies shared their experiences with the featured analysis in every version. Together with the publication, Battaglino additionally created a database of present well being matters, assets, organizations and help teams that the NWHRC may present its callers, which grew to become 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 matters allowed the NWHRC to make a reputation for itself. Nevertheless, the late ’90s introduced monetary woes to Columbia Hospital and its closing was imminent. Recognizing that the NWHRC was nonetheless a vital useful resource, Battaglino and two of her colleagues developed a marketing strategy to take over the NWHRC and hold it working — a plan that paved the best way for HealthyWomen to come back into existence. Because the small however mighty workforce of ladies labored to maintain the NWHRC afloat, they acquired a name from representatives at Johnson and Johnson who needed to be taught extra concerning the group and the way the 2 firms may companion. Battaglino’s ensuing pitch led to a grant that not solely stored 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 plan that positioned the middle as a go-to useful resource for ladies’s life-style manufacturers and magazines and well being editors. This led to partnerships with manufacturers like Prevention and Mattress, Tub & Past.
As time and know-how superior, the NWHRC transitioned into the net area 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 location was acknowledged by Forbes Journal as a high web site for ladies 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 advanced, and she or he grew to become CEO in 2006, positioning HealthyWomen because the go-to well being useful resource for ladies.
For greater than three many years, ladies have relied on HealthyWomen’s extremely researched and dependable info to have interaction, educate and empower them.
It’s been an honor to be a corporation that girls 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 concerning the historical past and evolution of HealthyWomen.
