Benefits of comprehensive health care for improving health outcomes in women.

Abstract

The American Psychological Association Health Care for the Whole Person Task Force was formulated to provide a rationale for integrating behavioral health services in primary care. Collectively, the task force called for a transformation of the biomedical system into one based on the biopsychosocial model. This article is a summary of the Women's Health Committee position paper that reviewed contextual factors in women's health, provided recommendations for clinical service action, and recommended an integrated primary health care system to address women's health needs. This article provides a vision of integrated care and a practical guide for psychology practitioners as they collaborate with other health care providers and health policy groups to improve health outcomes for women over the life course.

Women‐specific HIV/AIDS services: identifying and defining the components of holistic service delivery for women living with HIV/AIDS

“…This is based on recognizing that women are unique and therefore have health and social care needs that require specially designed programmes. It also is based on an understanding of the close connection between women's health and their whole lives [58,59,73,81,92]:Women's health involves women's emotional, social, cultural, spiritual and physical well-being, and is determined by the social, political, and economic context of women's lives as well as by biology. This broad definition recognizes the validity of women's life experiences and women's own beliefs about and experiences of health.…”

“…This involves supporting each woman by adequately meeting her individual health and social needs and by being all of whom she wants to be without passing judgment [85]. It also involves a commitment to flexibility, adjusting care for different needs and stages in a woman's life [73,83,87]. In practice, this may mean not chastising women for a missed appointment but simply re-scheduling it.…”

“…Acquiring stable housing, employment, nutritious food, reliable transportation, disability benefits, financial security, child care and other supportive services may also be critical to maintaining health [63,71,84]. Multidisciplinary integration and coordination of an array of services has been promoted as a means for managing the complexities of HIV/AIDS for women [63,64,68,69,[72][73][74][75]77,80,81,83,84,91]. Achieving this principle in practice often involves one of two models.…”

“…List of identified articles exploring women-specific services by region and subject area (total number of articles identified 030) Carter AJ et al Journal of the International AIDS Society 2013, 16:17433 http://www.jiasociety.org/index.php/jias/article/view/17433 | http://dx.doi.org/10.7448/IAS.16.1.17433based on an understanding of the close connection between women's health and their whole lives[58,59,73,81,92]:Women's health involves women's emotional, social, cultural, spiritual and physical well-being, and is determined by the social, political, and economic context of women's lives as well as by biology. This broad definition recognizes the validity of women's life experiences and women's own beliefs about and experiences of health.…”

The economics of behavioral health services in medical settings: A summary of the evidence.

“…Additional articles in the Health Care for the Whole Person series are "Benefits of Comprehensive Health Care for Improving Health Outcomes in Women" (Jarrett, Yee, & Banks, 2007), "Health Care for the Whole Person: Research Update" (Kaslow et al, 2007), and "A Rural Perspective on Health Care for the Whole Person" (Stamm, Lambert, Piland, & Speck, 2007).…”