Abstract. As the field of women's health has developed over the past decades, so too has attention to health care delivery, and how to meet the needs of women. In the 1960s, “women's health centers” began to develop, designed by and for women.1 A 1994 Commonwealth Fund supported study of women's health centers showed that many of the earlier models of community-based, reproductive health–focused, women's health centers had given way by the late 1980s to hospital-based models. These newer models were often an attempt to respond to the need for an increasingly complex set of services across a woman's full life span. In 1996, the Depart-ment of Health and Human Services, through its newly established Office on Women's Health (OWH), identified the designation of national centers of excellence in women's health as a potential way of expanding and improving upon these models of care delivery. The federal centers of excellence had to meet a daunting set of requirements — clinical, research, coordination with local communities, public and professional education, and leadership development as well as evaluation plans. Impressively, between 1996 and 1998, OWH established centers of excellence at 18 academic health centers around the country, including six with a greater emphasis on health care for minority women. By 2000, the OWH had provided 12 million dollars in support for these centers.

Reprinted with permission from the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health.  (Women's Health Issues, 2002, Vol 12 No 6, pp 287-290.)  Single copies of this article may be downloaded for personal research and study.

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