Women's Health Providers in United States

United States

Women’s health providers — such as obstetricians, gynecologists and midwives — specialize in reproductive health subjects like pregnancy, contraception (birth control) and menopause, as well as long-term health and wellness. They provide important preventive health services for women of reproductive age, including:

• Breast and cervical cancer screening.
• Contraception counseling.
• Testing and screening for HIV and sexually transmitted infections.
• Diabetes testing.

Moreover, women’s health providers provide critical care throughout pregnancy. Maintaining a meaningful relationship with a consistent provider throughout pregnancy is associated with a higher quality of care. Factors like privacy and politeness, personalized care, spending enough time with patients, listening to and answering their questions and offering information to keep them well-informed and involved in their care plan all impact the quality of care. A sense of trust in the relationship leads to more open communication and better-informed patients and providers. Furthermore, patients are more likely to follow advice from someone they trust.

The number of women’s health providers per capita is higher in urban areas compared with rural areas.

Strategies to increase access to and use of women’s health providers include: 

• Expanding the scope of practice for nurse midwives. 
• Expanding and extending insurance coverage for maternal care, especially in rural areas. 
• Implementing culturally tailored programs to support families, such as Family Spirit and the American Indian Infant Health Initiative, which use a community-based home-visitation approach to address maternal health disparities among American Indian/Alaska Native populations.

Healthy People 2030 does not explicitly address increasing the number of women’s health providers but has several goals related to cancer screening, family planning, pregnancy and childbirth. Their women’s health objectives include increasing the proportion of pregnant women who receive early and adequate prenatal care and reducing preterm births.

“ACOG Committee Opinion No. 586: Health Disparities in Rural Women.” Obstetrics & Gynecology 123, no. 2 (February 2014): 384–88. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.AOG.0000443278.06393.d6.

Improving Access to Maternal Health Care in Rural Communities. Issue Brief. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2019. https://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Agency-Information/OMH/equity-initiatives/rural-health/09032019-Maternal-Health-Care-in-Rural-Communities.pdf.

Sword, Wendy, Maureen I. Heaman, Sandy Brooks, Suzanne Tough, Patricia A. Janssen, David Young, Dawn Kingston, Michael E. Helewa, Noori Akhtar-Danesh, and Eileen Hutton. “Women’s and Care Providers’ Perspectives of Quality Prenatal Care: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.” BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 12, no. 1 (December 2012): 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2393-12-29.

Tikkanen, Roosa, Munira Z. Gunja, Molly FitzGerald, and Laurie Zephyrin. Maternal Mortality and Maternity Care in the United States Compared to 10 Other Developed Countries. The Commonwealth Fund, November 18, 2020.https://doi.org/10.26099/411v-9255.