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.
Visit the RWV website for more information and to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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.
Challenging Dangerous Drugs and Devices (CDDD)
Examples of our past and present policy advocacy work include:
- Demanding that women, people of color, and other groups are included in clinical trials and that the FDA receives women-specific evidence of drug and device safety and effectiveness before approval
- Fighting unproven claims about the benefits of hormone therapy at menopause and pushing for investment in research to develop safer treatments for hot flashes
- Pushing for better screening and treatment of osteoporosis
- Demanding that products to treat women’s sexual health problems are rigorously evaluated, safe, effective, and meet women’s real needs
- Supporting the FDA’s proposed Generic Drug Labeling Rule, which would give women access to improved and more accurate information about the risks and benefits of their medications.
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)
Examples of our past and present policy advocacy work include:
- Expanding and protecting coverage for abortion care services in public and private health insurance
- Ensuring women’s access to safe and effective medication abortion by defending against attacks on science and women’s health, and by supporting women who want to use pills on their own to end a pregnancy
- 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.
Changing conversations about women’s health
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.