Healthy women are a cornerstone of healthy families, communities, and economies. Women are often gatekeepers to the health of their children, partners, and aging relatives. Therefore, investing in women’s health, rights, and well-being produces benefits that can serve entire communities.
Currently, women and girls in Central Texas do not have adequate access to the resources they need to care for their health and well-being. This issue is largely due to a fragmented health system, which leads to barriers in obtaining continuous, comprehensive women’s health services.
Women of color especially experience discrimination, both in health settings and in their everyday lives. Black women in particular are disproportionately impacted because they experience the highest rates of toxic stress caused by racism, which a growing body of evidence suggests is a significant factor contributing to the alarming rates of morbidity and maternal mortality among this population.
Women experiencing poverty and women of color across the socioeconomic spectrum.
We recognize that Women’s Health is more than reproductive health. As we enter this new area of work, however, we view the perinatal period as a critical period of vulnerability and opportunity, during which women have specific health needs, such as family planning services, pregnancy-related health care, and maternity care. The vital work in these areas overlaps with our grantmaking efforts in Resilient Children through a two-generational approach to improve both child health and women’s health.
We are committed to listening and learning with our community colleagues and grant partners. As St. David’s Foundation pivots from solely being a charitable grantmaker to a strategic health funder and partner, our work in this area focuses on the following approaches:
Ensure women and girls are supported with the resources, respect, and conditions vital for equitable health and well-being, which means:
Contact
Lourdes Rodríguez, DrPH
Lrodriguez
Learn more about Lourdes here.
55% of Texas women reported at least one barrier to accessing reproductive
health care services. 38% of these women reported cost of services as the
primary barrier.
Black women’s pregnancy-related mortality rate in Texas was 2.3 times higher than the rate for Non-Hispanic White women (2011-2012).
Although education level is a health protective factor, a black woman with a
PhD is 2.3x more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than a white
woman with a high school diploma, indicating that even education level does
not protect them from the impact of racism.
83% of Texas schools are teaching abstinence-only or not providing sexual
education.