Women's Health Toolkit

Stretching Existing Resources
State agencies often have an Office of Communications that handles press releases and coordinates media relations. Such offices typically offer a myriad of other services to their internal and external customers. The one word of caution when working with state agency's communication office is to negotiate a date of project completion as the office may be assisting a variety of other programs with competing priorities. We worked closely with our Office of Communications to format and publish the Women's Health Annual Reports, Women's Health Data Report 2006 [pdf; 1.90mb], and several promotional items including a women's health booklet [pdf; 3.52kb] and promotional strategies [pdf; 1.40mb] for National Women's Health Week, Women's Health Month, and the Governor's Conferences on Women's Health.

Internships for students in university programs, such as nursing or public health, presented a great opportunity for students as well as for staff. Over the past two years, we have mentored three bright, energetic, and enthusiastic Master in Public Health interns from the local university. This partnership was so successful that one of the interns was hired to work on women's health issues after her graduation.

You can find almost unlimited free resources on the Web. It takes time to surf the Web and discover all of the available resources so we have a few tips and shortcuts. You can order many materials in bulk for free or only a nominal charge from the National Women's Health Information Center. It was helpful to subscribe to electronic newsletters [pdf; 10.6kb] that periodically send "briefs" on your topics of interest. These free services usually are a valuable source of timely information about cutting-edge literature, training opportunities, and conferences. Another suggestion is to develop a close relationship with your State Women's Health Coordinator. That person has two additional resources at her disposal: direct contact with the Regional Women's Health Coordinator and the list serve of State and Territory Women's Health Coordinators. Other Women's Health Resources [pdf; 10.6kb] have been posted on the department's website.

Create a Presence
In Florida, the passage of women's health legislation along with the receipt of the HRSA women's health grant and a great deal of local interest coalesced to help create a "women's health presence".

A Thousand Words
Florida's first Officer of Women's Health Strategy, heeded the old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words" and enlisted the support of computer savvy staff to help create a montage of women's health. [pdf; 276mb] First, the Officer of Women's Health Strategy "interviewed" program staff and key members of the Legislative Women's Caucus, took their photos, and then she extracted quotes from individual interviews for the montage.

Three questions were asked:

• What does a healthy woman look like?
• What does women's health mean to you?
• What one critical message would you give to a young girl regarding women's health?

Interviewer's pictures and quotes as well as important facts about women's health were set to music in a power point presentation. Staff developed a bulleted list of women's health facts which was also incorporated into the presentation. We played the montage as a non-stop looped video at a Women's Health and History celebration [pdf; 66.4kb] and at other state and national meetings where staff presented about Florida's Women's Health activities.

Another engaging way of creating a picture with women's health was the "Colors of Women's Health", [pdf; 27.8kb] a fashion show held at the first Governor's Conference on Women's Health. Each model donned outfits with specific color schemes, providing an opportunity for the audience to learn about various women's health issues signified by specific colors. Moreover, this innovative activity provided numerous collaboration opportunities. The models for the show were members of the Intra-Agency and Interagency Women's Health Committees and their daughters or mothers and spanned the age, race, and body-size continuums. The fashion show also created the opportunity to develop a new partnership with the retail sector.

Audio Teleconferences
Another public awareness strategy that was helpful in creating a women's health presence was our statewide audio-teleconference series; Best Practices in Women's Health. These quarterly conference calls are free and open to the public. The goal of the series is to promote integrated women's health services. On average, 100 -150 people participate in these hour-long audio-conferences. A list of topics of these calls is as follows:

• Overview of Best Practices
• Government, Academic, and Private Sector Approaches to Integrating Women's Health
• Women's Health Week Promotion - National, State, and Local Level
• Showcase of Women's Health Wellness Programs - Private Sector
• Promising Practices Addressing Health Needs of Incarcerated Women (HIV/AIDS prevention, sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and domestic violence)
• Showcase of Three Local Healthy Weight Initiatives supported by CityMatCH and the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs.
• Oral Health Needs Across the Lifespan
• Cervical Health -Overview by Florida Department of Health, and a Showcase of Two Demonstration Projects, and Wakulla County Health Department

National Women's Health Week
National Women's Health Week offers a natural platform for highlighting women's health locally and our awareness strategies cover a continuum of required financial and staff commitments -- ideas that are viable for women's health programs in resource-poor and booming communities alike. We found this national observance to be a powerful stimulus for pilot testing innovative health promotion strategies, particularly since our regional Office on Women's Health provides mini-grants to promote National Women's Health Week. One activity that is free and does not require much staff coordination is to initiate a mayoral or Governor's proclamation [pdf; 59.3kb] for National Women's Health Week. Another economical strategy that requires some staff coordination is to organize a wellness walk at work. This is an easy way to generate interest in women's health in your community. You can also step it up a notch and complete the challenge by promoting a little friendly competition between work units. In 2007, we did this and called it the Battle of Bureaus. [pdf; 259 kb] On the other end of the cost spectrum is an event that can create a women's health presence in itself -- a Governor's Conference on Women's Health. This undertaking requires significant staff and financial resources but it gives quite a bang for the buck in creating a presence.

Extend Your Reach
Once a presence was established, it quickly gained momentum. Policy leaders, community partners, and staff were energized and interested in helping. Part of this assistance came in the form of gaining legislative authority to spend non-recurring federal funds for women's health activities. This funding was used to broaden the scope and set in motion plans for a Second Governor's Conference on Women's Health, a Statewide Women's Health Plan, and 16 demonstration project grants for breast cancer education.

Governor's Annual Conference on Women's Health
The Second Governor's Conference on Women's Health provided a venue for discussing the major health and health care delivery issues affecting women in Florida. Over the course of two days, approximately 300 people participated in eight plenary sessions and 26 seminars focused on maintaining a healthy balance between work and family, community collaboration for advancing women's health, business approaches to women's health in the workplace, best clinical practices for women's health care, women's health and health care disparities, and emerging research that addresses women's gender-specific needs. In addition, a town hall meeting offered an open forum for members of the local community and conference participants to voice their concerns about what they perceive to be the most pressing issues in women's health. By bringing together and fostering multidisciplinary collaboration among many different stakeholders in women's health, this conference offered many opportunities to broaden both the reach and the efforts to improve women's health in Florida.

Statewide Plan on Women's Health
Another strategy for extending the reach of women's health was to engage approximately 100 individuals with expertise in women's health programs, policy and research, health consumers and advocates, state and federal agency partners, and leaders from community and professional organizations in a strategic planning process to develop Florida's first Statewide Plan on Women's Health. The Officer of Women's Health Strategy presided over the working meeting that the Interagency Committee on Women's Health, Strategic Planning Subcommittee helped organize. The strategic planning meeting provided participants with the most current information on the status of women's health in Florida. The agenda laid the groundwork for the development of a Statewide Women's Health Plan (which is still being developed) and the development of recommendations [pdf; 16.1kb] for priorities in women's health.

Breast Cancer Education Demonstration Projects
Dedicating funding for new, community-based breast cancer education provided press release [pdf; 21.5kb] opportunities, which were very effective as a promotional strategy. The Department of Health awarded 16 grants  [pdf; 28.6kb]to community-based organizations for innovative demonstration projects that hold promise for improving breast cancer awareness, availability of mammography services, and coordination of breast cancer treatment services. These projects concentrated the educational efforts on women ages 40-49 and/or racial and ethnic minorities affected disproportionately by breast cancer.

Demonstration Projects for Integrating Women's Health Care
The federal Integrated Comprehensive Women's Health Services grant  [pdf; 18.2kb]was another mechanism to extend the reach of the various women's health initiatives into local communities by:

• funding ten community-based demonstration projects [pdf; 16.9kb] to pilot innovative approaches to integrating women's health, effectively intensifying the local momentum around women's health awareness, and
• conducting the series of audio teleconferences [pdf; 15.8kb] that was described earlier.

With funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Department of Health funded ten community demonstration projects [pdf; 16.9kb] that hold promise for improving local delivery of integrated women's health care. We awarded the following county health departments $10,000 each through a competitive process: Brevard, Citrus, Duval, Hernando, Jefferson/Madison, Lake, Pasco, Pinellas, Seminole, and Sumter. These projects ranged from providing direct dental, health screening, and reproductive health services to developing community resource directories and educating the public about such topics as preconception health, prematurity and infant mortality. The counties were very successful in their efforts to provide awareness, education, and direct services, as well as increasing provider knowledge.

National Audio Teleconferences
The Best Practices in Women's Health Audio Conference Series [pdf; 15.8kb] exceeded expectations regarding numbers of participants. We envisioned these conference calls as a means of reaching county health department and Healthy Start Coalition audiences statewide, but almost immediately word of the free audio conference series spread through the Florida Public Health Association membership network and their respective organizations. Representatives from the public, private, and academic sectors requested access to and information about these convenient and accessible training opportunities. To contain costs, we encouraged participants to share phone lines and to use these audio conferences as opportunities to convene groups of staff and partner agencies together, thus adding value and impact by stimulating dialogue around the various topics. Sending a courtesy copy announcement about the audio conference series to the federal funding agency project director and Regional Women's Health Coordinator triggered a second wave of outreach, further extending the audience. Thanks to the ease of electronic dissemination, several national organizations widely distributed the information with their memberships, and as a result, there was strong, out-of-state participation.

Women's Health Month
Other opportunities for extending our reach came from statutorily mandated activities [pdf; 10.7kb] which acted to further advance the momentum around women's health. Among other duties, our state legislation directs the Officer of Women's Health Strategy to organize statewide Women's Health Month activities. Even though the National Observance of Women's Health is only a week, our statute mandated that we organize statewide Women's Health Month activities. Accordingly, the governor issued a Proclamation [pdf; 59.9kb] declaring May Women's Health Month. During that time promotional items, [pdf; 77kb] including a women's health booklet [pdf; 3.52mb] and press release [pdf; 12.7kb] were disseminated statewide through county health departments and Healthy Start coalitions. A series of activities celebrating women's health throughout the month  [pdf; 118kb] were promoted as well; with the largest event being the Governor's Conference on Women's Health.

Networking
Florida conducted a variety of networking strategies to highlight women's health issues, including participation on state, regional, and national conference calls; program promotional efforts through newsletters and presentations at meetings and conferences; and outreach to advocacy groups, such as the All Women's Coalition, Hispanic American Coalition, Healthy Start coalitions, and the Legislative Black Caucus.