As the country celebrates National Women’s Heath Week this week, women at the University of California, San Francisco’s National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, have double cause to celebrate.

It was 20 years ago the center was founded. The founding director, Nancy Milliken, continues to lead the enterprise today.

“Women were vulnerable to harm from undertreatment, overtreatment and mistreatment due to the lack of rigorous research on women's unique experience of health and disease,” Milliken said in the May 8 UCSF article.

Before launching the center, Milliken was a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF.

UCSF was designated in 1996 as one of the nation's first six National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health, sponsored by the Office on Women's Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The quest has always been for health equity.

“My dream would be that the need for UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health would be eliminated because sex and gender approaches to research, clinical care, education are in the DNA of UCSF, and inform health care and policy across our nation and the world,” Milliken said in the UCSF article.

The other five National Centers of Excellence in Women’s Health designated by HHS in 1996 are located at:

– Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, Philadelphia

– Magee-Womens Hospital, Pittsburgh

– Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio

– University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

– Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Read the article here.

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com