Women's Health
If you are seeking women’s healthcare services in Arizona, please visit our Community Health Center Locator to find a health center near you.
AACHC promotes the importance of a comprehensive approach to women’s health, recognizing there are many components to wellness and that women have unique and complex health-related needs. AACHC’s Women’s Health Programs focus on women’s health needs in Arizona with an emphasis on increasing access to care and improving health outcomes for women throughout the state.
Domestic and Sexual Violence
Through a Rural Program Grant from the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, AACHC has worked since 2007 to integrate domestic and sexual violence services into the healthcare setting. Four rural Arizona Community Health Center sites have partnered with the Association on the Rural Community Health Center Domestic and Sexual Violence Program:
- Chiricahua Community Health Center (Douglas)
- Mariposa Community Health Center, Inc (Nogales)
- North Country HealthCare (Holbrook)
- North Country HealthCare (St. Johns)
Health center partners address domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking through:
- Universal, confidential screening for domestic violence during healthcare visits
- Direct advocacy services
- Supportive services to children and family members in homes where domestic violence occurred
- Trainings to professionals in a variety of fields, including healthcare, child care, law enforcement, and education
- Community education events to increase awareness of dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking
- Participation in coordinated community response to domestic violence, including regular collaboration with a wide variety of community partners to better address accountability for perpetrators and needs of victims
Women’s Health Programs also partners with the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Arizona Department of Health Services, the Arizona Family Planning Council, Dr. Jill Messing and the Southeast Arizona Health Education Center on Project Connect: A Coordinated Public Health Initiative to Prevent Violence against Women, which seeks to find new ways to identify, respond to and prevent domestic and sexual violence, and promote an improved public health response to abuse. The project provides increased emphasis on the issues of birth control sabotage and sexual coercion within relationships and the resulting negative impact on women’s overall health, including reproductive health.
Access to Healthcare and Health Information for Arizona women
AACHC’s Women’s Health Programs partner with a wide variety of federal, state, and local agencies to address women’s health needs in Arizona. Recent activities have been focused on:
- Preconception Health
- Infertility prevention through early identification and treatment of sexuality transmitted infections.
- Building sustainable, multidisciplinary programs to address the comprehensive needs of women in rural and frontier areas.
- Examining ways to increase access to healthcare and health resources for women in rural areas of the state.
For more information on AACHC’s Women’s Health Programs or if your organization is interested in partnering with AACHC on issues related to women’s health, please contact Jessica Yanow at jessicay@aachc.org or 602.288.7545.
For links to a variety of women’s health resources, please click here.
