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We are feminist health activists who use policy analysis as a tool for change. We use the avenues of input that are open to us – sometimes on the streets, more often in government offices – to bring the voice of people concerned about women’s health to decision-makers who create and implement health policies.
Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need (RWV)A national initiative working to ensure that women’s voices are heard and women’s concerns are addressed in the fight for universal health coverage.
Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need (RWV)
RWV’s annual convening of regional coordinators in Washington, D.C., December 2016 (photo credit James R. Brantley)
Co-founded in 2007 by the NWHN, activist Byllye Avery, the Black Women’s Health Imperative, and the Women’s Health Program of Community Catalyst (formerly MergerWatch), Raising Women’s Voices is a national initiative working to ensure that women’s voices are heard and women’s concerns are addressed in the fight for universal health coverage.
RWV has a special mission of engaging women who are not often invited into health policy discussions, including women of color, low income women, immigrant women, young women, women with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ community.
The NWHN’s advocacy priorities through RWV include:
Defending and strengthening Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act
Expanding Medicaid to ensure that low-income women and their families have affordable insurance options, regardless of where they live
Ensuring that health insurance marketplaces engage women as stakeholders; offer plans that cover comprehensive care, including reproductive health care; and actively work to reduce health disparities
Ensuring that health insurance outreach and enrollment reaches diverse women and families in culturally and linguistically competent ways, are user-friendly, and help women find affordable health policies that meet their health needs
Building support for policies that advance health equity and address the affordability and accessibility barriers that affect women, immigrants, communities of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities.
Challenging Dangerous Drugs and Devices (CDDD)Through this campaign, we advocate for rigorous approval standards and long-term evidence of safety for drugs, medical devices, and medical treatments.
Women face health risks from drugs, medical devices, and medical treatments that are unproven, unsafe, ineffective, or unnecessary for their specific situation. Too often, these products are promoted by drug- and device-makers hoping to make big profits by capitalizing on the over-medicalization of women’s health. Through our CDDD campaign, we advocate for rigorous approval standards and long-term evidence of safety, work to prevent FDA approval of unsafe and unproven medical products, help ensure that women have complete and accurate information about the health products and services marketed to them, and push for the representation of diverse women in clinical trials.
Examples of our past and present policy advocacy work include:
Securing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Autonomy (SRH)Defending women’s sexual and reproductive health and autonomy against anti-choice threats that seek to undermine access to contraception and abortion care.
Securing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Autonomy (SRH)
Women need access to comprehensive safe and effective reproductive health technologies, services, and information without restrictions driven by ideology. Through our SRH campaign, we defend women’s sexual and reproductive health and autonomy against anti-choice threats that seek to undermine access to contraception and abortion care. We also promote access to unbiased, accurate information about how women can protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). We are committed to creating the world where people no longer experience obstacles in obtaining the reproductive and sexual health care that is right for them. We are passionate about gender equity and expanding health care to vulnerable populations, including women of color, young women, poor women, and LGBTQ people.
Examples of our past and present policy advocacy work include:
Challenging efforts to direct women toward any particular contraceptive method and ensuring that people are provided comprehensive, scientifically accurate information about their full range of contraceptive options
Establishing over-the-counter access to affordable oral contraception and emergency contraception without medically unjustified age restrictions
Promoting evidence-based information about the safety and effectiveness of internal (female) condoms in the United States
Join Our Campaigns
Action Alert Tell the FDA: Let pregnant people get the pill where they take it - at home!
We’re calling on the FDA to permanently lift these restrictions and let pregnant people receive the abortion pill through the mail.
The Network assists women’s health advocates in educating state and local officials and members of Congress on the issues, writing letters to the editor, holding rallies, and influencing the media. We connect federal and state policymakers to the wisdom on the ground about what women need, where their rights are being threatened, and where we are building momentum.
We cannot continue this work without committed institutional and individual partners like you.