August 17, 2022, is Countrywide Nonprofit Working day.
HealthyWomen’s original founder, Violet Bowen-Hugh, M.D., was a force of character. Born and lifted in Clendenin, West Virginia, Bowen-Hugh arrived from an underprivileged history, which motivated her to create a location where by girls, no make a difference their socioeconomic standing, experienced obtain to reputable health and fitness information and facts. As an academically gifted girl who graduated at the top rated of her course, Bowen-Hugh was the 1st girl in her family to complete large college. She went on to show up at faculty and, upon her graduation, commenced a career in accounting.
Bowen-Hugh created a very good lifetime for herself, but she had a deeply rooted need to enable other individuals. And in the summertime of 1954, she realized that want could no for a longer time be denied. Influenced by a feminine medical professional — a single of only 48 woman health professionals in the state — who was managing her nephew in the medical center, she resolved to abide by her aspiration and show up at medical school.
Immediately after graduating, Bowen-Hugh turned a resident at the Columbia Healthcare facility for Ladies, one particular of only 7 women’s hospitals at the time, the place she practiced obstetrics and gynecology, ultimately getting to be head of the section. Nonetheless not completely ready to quit dreaming, Bowen-Hugh ongoing battling for bigger top quality health care for women and advocated for far more study to be finished on overall health difficulties certain to gals.
It was this advocacy that alerted Bowen-Hugh to the lack of scientifically correct information about women’s healthcare desires, which led to the creation of the Countrywide Women’s Wellbeing Useful resource Heart (NWHRC) in 1988. Sooner or later rebranded to HealthyWomen in 2009, NWHRC was created to comprehend Bowen-Hugh’s desire of giving females with medically vetted, dependable facts about their health care fears and to respond to questions about diagnoses and offer guidelines for wholesome living.
The NWHRC began as a 1-800 range that women could connect with for facts about healthcare conditions they’d been diagnosed with and standard well being assistance. The woman who answered the phone was Beth Battaglino. Identical to Bowen-Hugh’s origin story, Battaglino commenced by acquiring levels in small business and political science but constantly understood she wished to be a nurse. To get her foot in the door, she utilized for a volunteer coordinator situation at Columbia Hospital for Females, but the recruiter saw one thing unique in Battaglino and encouraged she function for the NWHRC in its place. In the course of the working day, Battaglino worked as aspect of this wellness useful resource for ladies, and she analyzed to be a registered nurse at evening. Above time, the corporation flourished and commenced branching out into new approaches to tell its goal audience. Just one of its most well-liked offerings was a bimonthly newsletter that focused on wellness situations special to females. This e-newsletter was the precursor to our preferred Serious Girls, Genuine Stories sequence, as women of all ages shared their ordeals with diverse diagnoses in each and every edition. Alongside with the publication, Battaglino also established a database of current wellness matters, sources, organizations and help groups that the NWHRC could supply its callers, which turned the template for the HealthyWomen website.
Beth Battaglino speaks at the 5th Once-a-year HealthyWomen Party, March 2022
The mid-’90s noticed a press to integrate women’s health and fitness and wellness into current way of life publications like Cosmopolitan and Redbook, and the normalization of talking about women’s wellbeing matters allowed the NWHRC to make a name for by itself. Even so, the late ’90s introduced money woes to Columbia Medical center and its closing was imminent. Recognizing that the NWHRC was nonetheless an crucial useful resource, Battaglino and two of her colleagues developed a organization approach to take over the NWHRC and hold it working — a program that paved the way for HealthyWomen to arrive into existence. As the small but mighty group of females worked to keep the NWHRC afloat, they been given a phone from associates at Johnson and Johnson who wished to understand more about the group and how the two corporations could lover. Battaglino’s ensuing pitch led to a grant that not only saved the useful resource middle in existence but permitted the NWHRC to be even a lot more bold than prior to. Recognizing that the community and the media’s curiosity in wellbeing and wellness was not abating at any time soon, Battaglino created a promoting plan that positioned the heart as a go-to resource for women’s way of living brand names and publications and well being editors. This led to partnerships with brand names like Prevention and Mattress, Tub & Outside of.
As time and know-how advanced, the NWHRC transitioned into the online place by getting to be the first at any time website that comprehensively tackled women’s wellness and wellness troubles, and in 2009, it rebranded as HealthyWomen. Considering the fact that then, the site was regarded by Forbes Journal as a prime site for women of all ages a few years in a row, and Oprah Magazine recognized the web site as its leading women’s health internet site in 2010.
Above time, Battaglino’s function at HealthyWomen has progressed, and she turned CEO in 2006, positioning HealthyWomen as the go-to wellbeing useful resource for women.
For more than 3 many years, women of all ages have depended on HealthyWomen’s highly researched and dependable information and facts to have interaction, educate and empower them.
It is been an honor to be an business that females count on — and 1 the HealthyWomen team has not taken lightly at any time in our history.
Listen to our CEO speak more about the heritage and evolution of HealthyWomen.
More Stories
Thoughts as of late: on evolving, growing & that tiny voice inside
County Health Officials Report 17% Increase in Tuberculosis Cases
10 Most Nutrient-Rich Foods To Include In Your Diet