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Women's Health Services
Santa Fe, New Mexico

"Health is a function of the interactions among biological, cultural, environmental, ethnic, familial, genetic, legal, occupational, physiological, social, spiritual factors…and, sometimes, chance."

Center Highlights:

Women's Health Services (WHS) is a nonprofit health care provider, the oldest and largest women-focused primary care practice in Santa Fe. For over 30 years, WHS has provided superior health care for Northern New Mexico women.

WHS has tirelessly championed the need for research and clinical application of sex and gender-specific health care, and has strived to provide comprehensive, holistic, integrated women-centered care to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. In 2004, WHS provided over 18,000 visits to 5,500 insured, uninsured, under-insured and indigent patients.

Over the last ten years, medical research has overwhelmingly supported the criticality of incorporating sex and gender specific information into medical practice, not only for gynecological and reproductive issues, but for determining previously sex-neutral treatments such as which antidepressant or painkiller to prescribe or which angina treatment or heart attack intervention to order. Researchers at prestigious institutions including MIT and Harvard now believe that sex differences are not only hormone related, but also are carried genetically in every cell of the body. As a result, the discipline of women's health is taking a giant step forward. While it used to concern itself with diseases and conditions that affect women's reproductive systems, the field is now examining how all diseases, conditions and treatments may affect men and women differently. Women's Health Services, Santa Fe's National Community Center of Excellence in Women's Health (CCOE) since 2001, is at the vanguard of putting this new knowledge to use in medical practice.

Women's Health Services is dedicated to providing a culturally competent, caring environment and staff, trained in women-centered health care, integrating complementary and alternative medicine and partnering with community organizations and with women themselves, to ensure the highest quality health care. Women's Health Services operates in compliance with the American College of Women's Health Physicians' guiding principals, which are:

• Diversity: The recognition and value of diversity is key to the development of progressive models of medical education, research, patient care and organizational development.

• Respectful and therapeutic use of power: The respectful use of power is "the capacity to produce a positive and mutually empowering change".

• Complexity: Health is a function of the interactions among biological, cultural, environmental, ethnic, familial, genetic, legal, occupational, physiological, social, spiritual factors…and, sometimes, chance.

• Activism: Many of the health problems of girls and women are influenced by the broader political and economic contexts of their lives.

• Eclectic healing practices: Healing takes many forms.

• Women-centered: Women's health is a distinct body of biomedical, psychological and sociological knowledge and skills based on the study of girls' and women's experiences.

• Individual and organizational well being: Individual and collective success occurs best in the context of care, mutuality and respectful connection.

Women's Health Services understands that the health care system must change to create an effective environment conducive to healing, but we also recognize that only an individual woman can heal herself. Provided with a healing environment, appropriate tools and information, women can meet this challenge with a commitment to taking charge of their own health and lives.

Women's Health Services collaborates with the following community organizations to bring superior health care to New Mexico women:

• Santa Fe Community College: Leadership development for women through the Women in Transition Program

• The Santa Fe County Maternal & Child Health Planning Council: Public education and outreach

• Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Public education and outreach; leadership development for women

• New Mexico Women's Foundation: Leadership development for women; assistance with sustainability

• St. Vincent Hospital: Community hospital serving the northern New Mexico region

• Northern New Mexico Family Practice Residency Program: Clinical training within the context of the community in which residents live

To learn more about this CCOE, visit their web site at www.womenshealthsantafe.com.

Women's Health Services

Pat Sanchez, Director of Operations
Women's Health Services
Community Center of Excellence in Women's Health
901 West Alameda, Suite 25
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Phone: (505) 955-9495
Fax: (505) 955-9496
psanchez@whssf.org

Current as of February 2006