National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health (CoE)
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In 1998, the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) was designated as one of 21 National Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health. In 2006, UIC was named a National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health Ambassador for Change.
The UIC Center of Excellence (CoE) was established through collaboration among researchers from various colleges, including:
- College of Nursing
- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- College of Medicine
- College of Social Work
- College of Pharmacy
- University Library
- School of Public Health
The UIC CoE sits in the Center for Research on Women and Gender (CRWG) within the College of Medicine. The CoE was designed to integrate biomedical and behavioral expertise with the grass roots women’s health vision, and emphasizes partnerships across disciplines and professions, between the academy and the community, and between health care providers and patients. The efforts of the Center are focused on comprehensive health care and innovative research across the life span, with particular emphases on underserved populations and global women’s health.
Major goals for the Center include:
- Implementing a strategic multidisciplinary research agenda relevant to informing health care delivery
- Training researchers for proficiency in multidisciplinary women’s health research.
Additional goals include:
- Reducing barriers to wellness for underserved women
- Conducting ongoing evaluation of services and programs
- Developing women’s health curricula through collaboration across disciplines
- Developing leadership qualities in women in the health professions.
Further goals involve educating and training community women for health advocate roles, promoting dialogue with women from diverse communities, disseminating health information, and participating in policy discussions at all levels.
The UIC CoE/CRWG is home to UIC’s Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) program, a career development program to support the advancement of research in women’s health and sex/gender-based research.