Policymaking, equality, and Women's health in the United States

Advanced Practice Providers stand ready to protect and advance women's healthcare interests through leadership, innovation, science, and policy. Women's preventive services are directly impacted by healthcare policy. In the United States, we have a long history of women dedicating their lives to efforts supporting equality, reproductive freedom, and other women's health issues. These include benefits such as women's preventive services, maternity and postpartum care, access to primary healthcare services, and overall cost of delivering healthcare. Government agencies are also directly involved in creating policies, which impact healthcare services utilized by millions of US women. We begin with historical accounts of the fight for equality by American women, journey through women's suffrage and the fight for reproductive freedoms, followed by contemporary policies impacting preventive healthcare and governing influences. This chapter provides a historical look at equality and women's health issues that, over a period of hundreds of years of activism, resulted in the enactment of key policies formulated by an expansive range of policymaking groups and bodies. Regardless of which moment is being lived, while living life in the messy middle, policymaking should be achieved in ways that respect human rights. Many of these efforts led to the establishment of policies which served to improve the health, wellbeing, and quality of life for American women.