August 17, 2022, is Nationwide Nonprofit Day.

HealthyWomen’s unique founder, Violet Bowen-Hugh, M.D., was a drive of nature. Born and raised in Clendenin, West Virginia, Bowen-Hugh got here from an underprivileged background, which impressed her to create a spot the place girls, irrespective of their socioeconomic standing, had entry to dependable well being data. As an academically gifted lady who graduated on the high of her class, Bowen-Hugh was the primary lady in her household to finish highschool. She went on to attend faculty and, upon her commencement, started a profession in accounting.

Bowen-Hugh made a superb life for herself, however she had a deeply rooted need to assist others. And in the summertime of 1954, she realized that need may now not be denied. Impressed by a feminine doctor — one in all solely 48 feminine medical doctors within the state — who was treating her nephew within the hospital, she determined to comply with her dream and attend medical college.

After graduating, Bowen-Hugh grew to become a resident on the Columbia Hospital for Ladies, one in all solely seven girls’s hospitals on the time, the place she practiced obstetrics and gynecology, ultimately turning into head of the division. Nonetheless not able to cease dreaming, Bowen-Hugh continued combating for increased high quality healthcare for girls and advocated for extra analysis to be performed on well being points particular to girls.

It was this advocacy that alerted Bowen-Hugh to the shortage of scientifically correct details about girls’s healthcare wants, which led to the creation of the Nationwide Ladies’s Well being Useful resource Middle (NWHRC) in 1988. Ultimately rebranded to HealthyWomen in 2009, NWHRC was created to understand Bowen-Hugh’s dream of offering girls with medically vetted, trusted details about their healthcare considerations and to reply questions on diagnoses and supply ideas for wholesome dwelling.

The NWHRC started as a 1-800 quantity that girls may name for details about medical circumstances they’d been identified with and normal well being recommendation. The girl who answered the telephone was Beth Battaglino. Much like Bowen-Hugh’s origin story, Battaglino started by acquiring levels in enterprise and political science however at all times knew she needed to be a nurse. To get her foot within the door, she utilized for a volunteer coordinator place at Columbia Hospital for Ladies, however the recruiter noticed one thing particular in Battaglino and really useful she work for the NWHRC as a substitute. Through the day, Battaglino labored as a part of this well being useful resource for girls, and she or he studied to be a registered nurse at night time. Over time, the group flourished and commenced branching out into new methods to tell its target market. One among its hottest choices was a bimonthly e-newsletter that targeted on well being circumstances distinctive to girls. This article was the precursor to our common Actual Ladies, Actual Tales collection, as girls shared their experiences with totally different diagnoses in every version. Together with the e-newsletter, Battaglino additionally created a database of present well being subjects, sources, organizations and assist teams that the NWHRC may present its callers, which grew to become the template for the HealthyWomen web site.

Beth Battaglino speaks on the fifth Annual HealthyWomen Occasion, March 2022

The mid-’90s noticed a push to combine girls’s well being and wellness into present life-style publications like Cosmopolitan and Redbook, and the normalization of discussing girls’s well being subjects allowed the NWHRC to make a reputation for itself. Nevertheless, the late ’90s introduced monetary woes to Columbia Hospital and its closing was imminent. Recognizing that the NWHRC was nonetheless a necessary useful resource, Battaglino and two of her colleagues developed a marketing strategy to take over the NWHRC and maintain it working — a plan that paved the best way for HealthyWomen to come back into existence. Because the small however mighty workforce of girls labored to maintain the NWHRC afloat, they acquired a name from representatives at Johnson and Johnson who needed to be taught extra concerning the group and the way the 2 corporations may associate. Battaglino’s ensuing pitch led to a grant that not solely stored the useful resource heart in existence however allowed the NWHRC to be much more formidable than earlier than. Recognizing that the general public and the media’s curiosity in well being and wellness wasn’t abating anytime quickly, Battaglino created a advertising and marketing plan that positioned the middle as a go-to useful resource for girls’s life-style manufacturers and magazines and well being editors. This led to partnerships with manufacturers like Prevention and Mattress, Bathtub & Past.

As time and know-how superior, the NWHRC transitioned into the net area by turning into the primary ever web site that comprehensively addressed girls’s well being and wellness points, and in 2009, it rebranded as HealthyWomen. Since then, the positioning was acknowledged by Forbes Journal as a high web site for girls three years in a row, and Oprah Journal acknowledged the positioning as its high girls’s well being web site in 2010.

Over time, Battaglino’s position at HealthyWomen has advanced, and she or he grew to become CEO in 2006, positioning HealthyWomen because the go-to well being useful resource for girls.

For greater than three many years, girls have trusted HealthyWomen’s extremely researched and dependable data to interact, educate and empower them.

It’s been an honor to be a corporation that girls depend on — and one the HealthyWomen workforce hasn’t taken flippantly at any time in our historical past.

Hearken to our CEO speak extra concerning the historical past and evolution of HealthyWomen.