Clinical Services
Women's Health Group
The Women's Health Group, located on the 4th Floor of the Doctor's Office Building, is a primary care-based multidisciplinary
practice for the care of women. Established as one of the first comprehensive women's health practices within an academic
institution in 1986, the program has been under the directorship of Karen Freund, MD, MPH, since 1987. The practice utilizes
a multidisciplinary team approach to the care of women, with an emphasis on preventive care and emotional well-being. The
unit employs a primary care-based model, where all patients are invited to select a primary care provider from the internists
and nurse practitioners on site. These primary care providers all have demonstrated training beyond their traditional field of
expertise, ensuring the incorporation of ambulatory, gynecologic care, mental health screening, and assessment for interpersonal
violence, for example, into routine health care. The practice provides full preventive health services to patients including same
day screening mammography and bone densitometry, all in the same building.
This group of primary care providers is further augmented by ties to other relevant clinical fields. Mental needs are addressed
by two licensed clinical psychologist who practice in the same locale and who provide consultation and promote ready coordination
of mental and medical health care services. Similarly, gynecology consultation is available on a same day basis from members of
the department of obstetrics and gynecology, either from within the women's health group practice site or from gynecology offices.
The Women's Health Group includes the Breast Health Group, part of Boston Medical Center's comprehensive
Breast Health Program. Providers offer complete screening and diagnostic services, including assessment of high
risk women, assessment of abnormal clinical breast exams and imaging; fine needle and cone biopsy; and, ongoing
primary care needs for survivors of breast cancer.
|
|
|
|
Women Veterans Health Center Programs
at the Boston Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Founded officially in 1993, the Women's Veteran's Health Center, located at 150 S. Huntington Avenue in Jamaica Plain,
has three distinct programs for women: the Women's Health Center (WHC), the Women's Stress Disorders Treatment Team (WSDTT),
and the women's Health Sciences Division (WHSD), a component of the VA's national Center for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD). These programs together offer an unusual clinical and administrative grouping of interdisciplinary, integrated
health and mental health services that provide nearly a full spectrum of one-stop shopping. Further, clinical efforts are
directly supported by the WHSD's ongoing research on the results of traumatic stressor exposure on women's physical and
emotional well-being, including implications for the structure of the delivery of care. To date, the integrated model has
reflected innovative, comprehensive, and cost-efficient care that has been especially attentive to the needs of at risk,
underserved women, especially women of lower socioeconomic or ethnic minority status.
The Women Veterans Health Center is devoted to the total well-being of women veterans, through the integration of medical
and mental health care. To do this, the Center's interdisciplinary team provides: basic primary and preventive medical
and mental health care, specialty medical care, and specialty mental health care. The scope of clinical services offered
within the Women Veterans Health Center is broad and includes: primary care, including preventive care, using a
biopsychosocial, team-based approach (general internal medicine, family practice, nursing); mental health care (social
work, psychology, psychiatry); a women veterans coordinator; nutrition; pharmacy; gynecology; gynecologic oncology;
breast health; cardiology; neurology; plastic surgery; rehabilitation medicine; rheumatology/osteoporosis; and urology.
|
