Promoting Women’s Health and Safe Motherhood
The main aim of the project WHEALTH is the promotion of gender specific and gender sensitive prevention strategies at national and regional levels. Specifically, the project aims at: • Raising awareness on women’s health and safe motherhood (cervical and breast cancer, breastfeeding etc). • Providing access to health information, especially to women in island and remote communities. • Strengthening social cohesion. • Case studies, educational workshops and campaigns. • A state of the art web site. Gender differences are not always taken into account in the provision of healthcare and as women’s health priorities differ across Europe, women living in the island and coastal areas of ARCHIMED share common problems stemming from the lack of gender sensitive approaches in the provision of healthcare. WHEALTH can play a significant role in tackling this issue by addressing the following specific problems: • The lack of systematic strategies for the promotion of gender specific and gender sensitive healthcare • The increasing emergence of social isolation in the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on healthcare • The lack of access to quality healthcare services by women, living in the island and coastal areas of Greece, Italy and Cyprus The Strategic objectives of WHEALTH are to help women to: • Develop confidence and personal skills in caring for their health, take an active role in understanding, communicating and making decisions about their health concerns • Benefit from the creation of trans-national networks of agencies responsible for the promotion of preventive health strategies Main Activities, Expected Results and Outputs: • Networking of the relevant agencies for the effective provision of gender sensitive and gender specific health promotion strategies • Raising Awareness about women’s health issues via the internet and public awareness campaigns • Training seminars and workshops for relevant agency staff Deliverables: • Initial Report on the current situation in the Participating Countries • Health educational workshops • State of the art Internet site • Pilot Trans-national Information Provision Centre • Public awareness campaigns • Future Action Plan