Partnership Building

Preconception health (women’s wellness) covers almost 30 years of a woman’s life and addresses issues ranging from nutrition and exercise to family planning, mental wellness, violence prevention, primary care, reproductive health (including HIV/AIDS prevention), substance use, pregnancy, lactation, and management of chronic diseases. Addressing women’s wellness before, between and beyond pregnancy necessitates the development of new partnerships and the recognition of shared goals.

Every Woman Southeast represents a concerted effort on the part of public health leaders across eight states to find common goals and strategies among many different partners to maximize our capacity to provide comprehensive, preventive services to women of childbearing age.

One goal of Every Woman Southeast is to form multidisciplinary, multi sector, diverse women’s wellness councils – at the state level and at the regional level. In the hopes of not inadvertently creating a new “silo” each state is determining the best way to achieve this goal. Some states have already created preconception health councils while others are considering expanding existing councils (such as folic acid or infant mortality) to encompass this issue. At the regional level, the current leadership team represents each state and will continue to grow as the Initiative’s first project gets underway.

Participants at the meeting in March 2010 suggested that each state and the region consider reaching out to health care providers and their associations, community health centers, payers, faith communities, legislators, and local celebrities in addition to insuring that chronic disease, Title X, Title V and Offices of Minority Health in each company were also recruited. Again, looking for existing forums that already draw together these diverse groups was stressed.

In 2008 states in our region were asked to compile plans for addressing infant mortality and preconception health that included Family Planning, Women’s Health and the Minority Health. While it is not clear as to whether or not all these plans were put into place, the development of the plans is an important step forward. Members of Every Woman Southeast have suggested that while groups at the local and even state level want to work together, it is essential that funding, staffing and performance measures at the regional and national level support this work as well.