introduction

The Elizabeth Blackwell Women's Health Center grew out of the Women' s Counseling Service and opened Feb. 6, 1974. Our collective experience led us to believe that the real needs in the area of women's health lay in knowledge and control.

We exist for the following reasons:

-- to change the way health care is presently delivered by the use of consumer control and pressure.

--to give women access to information about their bodies so that they can maintain their health.

--to encourage a synthesis of women 's emotional and physical health and to do so by offering counseling in all areas, by both trained counselors and professional women therapists.

--to facilitate a preventive rather than acute focus in health care .

--to teach women the techniques of self-examination and by so doing give them back the tools for controlling their bodies .

--to put pressuree on the drug companies, medical corporations, and research institutes to make their products more responsive to the needs of the people.

--to help women deal with their oppression emotionally, politically, and medically and to help each other grow as women and as individuals .

background

We are a collective of about 20 women who have been meeting since Spring, 1973. We now express our varying levels of commitment through task forces relating specifically to the programs outlined above. We maintain internal communication and cohesion through a steering committee composed of one representative from each task force. We also have a monthly general meeting to which everyone is invited. We staff an office which is open every weekday . We invite women to use our files and library, and to look over the literature we have for sale. And, we still operate a phone referral service,