Empower women with information resources for community-based health care

A simple health information center that acts as a women’s forum for discussion, news and information, can be a most productive way of improving healthcare basics in a group of people. Women continue to play pivotal roles in family health and wellness. They can make dramatic inroads in to debilitating disease and sickness if they have access to quality information written and reviewed by experts. Much of this is already available and just needs some care and creativity to make it accessible to women who can put the knowledge to good purpose.

Prevention will always be the plank on which productivity of investments in public health can be built. The mother and wife are at the vanguard of community health and Departments of Health and Human Services must work through this channel if the State is to have any meaningful role in building information sharing institutions. Health literacy will be off to a flying start if a nation makes a concerted and sustained effort to improve the health of all women. Menstruation, menopause, diet and fitness are fundamental issues that act as prerequisites for improving health care for people at large.

Investments needed in preparing guides and for health worker training are fractional compared to the massive amounts needed to make cutting-edge medical technology available for the elite. The ethics of prolonging life for exceptions or for treating effects of unbridled spread of obesity is tenuous, as long as large numbers of women have no doctor and allow disease to take root in their homes, because they are denied access to relevant and quality information.

The health insurance model is bursting at its seams and we must take affirmative action to restructure a way out of the quagmire. Priority resource allocation for the empowerment of women through health literacy is a beacon in the darkness, too bright to ignore. It will take us ashore steadily and with certainty and we can afford the pittance it will cost as well.