HMS Women's Health Center Opens

A Harvard Medical School (HMS) center devoted to improving preventative care among minority women is now fully operational.

Made possible by a contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Center of Excellence in Women's Health was announced Oct. 1 as a collaborative project between HMS and three teaching hospitals: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Minority women have shorter life expectancies and are less likely to receive adequate prenatal care than white women. Black women, in particular, have the highest rates of death from cerebrovascular disease, and while breast cancer death rates have declined among white women, they have increased for black women, center officials said.

The center is a "huge booster shot in the arm" for the Harvard medical community, said Benjamin Sachs, codirector of the new center who is also chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Andrea Dunaif, co-director and chief of the Division of Women's Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said she agrees.

"Each teaching hospital has its own strengths...there is extraordinary expertise divided across these hospitals. This contract will enable us to have a forum; it will bring the Harvard medical community together for dialogue," she said.

According to the directors, the four pillars of the program are encouraging research in women's health, developing innovative practices in clinical care, connecting to the community through social outreach programs and educating the next generation of physicians in women's health as well as helping women whose career path is medicine.

"We can share outreach programs such as WELL [a local program] with the other hospitals," Sachs said.

WELL helps uninsured women in Boston by training them in public health issues and encouraging them to go to their community health centers for preventative screenings.

By the beginning of November, women will be able to call a toll-free number to obtain information or set up appointments for a wide variety of clinical services at a single site, a service the center calls "one-stop shopping."

Members of the Harvard medical community responded with excitement to the news of the contract, which organizers won after completing a comprehensive 450-page application.

After the federal government awarded the contract, Joseph B. Martin, dean of HMS, started a fund for projects in women's health.

Traditionally, the government only granted contracts to "single teaching institution[s]," Sachs said.

By contrast, "Harvard's model is a more disperse academic community with the three hospitals," he said. "We cover a much wider waterfront."

The grant to HMS is part of the federal program's third year.

"This is still a work in progress," Dunaif said. "The first-generation centers [those awarded contracts in October 1996] are just about to start publishing results, so it's early days yet. But it has generated dialogue and put women's health on the map."

"We would be delighted to have students of the University volunteer for the center. It is a great way for students to get involved in women's health policy and women's health," she added.