Woman Advocacy

• Visit our Advocacy website
• Call our direct line for advocacy at (231) 818-8704
• Email us at info@womansafehealthadvocacy.com

Advocacy Pledge

I pledge to welcome you, listen to you, believe you, protect your privacy, be accountable to you and respect your “no.”

I pledge to be compassionate and professional. I pledge that I will have a high awareness, acceptance and affirmation of the specific needs you have as my client based on your age, gender, class, ethnicity, race and trauma herstory.

I am committed to engaging in open, honest and transparent communication with you throughout this process.

It is my goal as your Woman Advocate to assist you in creating individualized goals and an individual definition of healing and wellness, including what it means to cope, manage and thrive.

A woman advocate is a friend, colleague, family member or trained professional who serves the woman obtaining health care, with an awareness of her herstory and the power dynamics, sexism and other oppressions she is up against in Status Quo Health Care. A woman advocate is a type of a health care advocate. Health care advocates are not trained specifically to accompany women with a feminist lens on power dynamics in health care, but woman advocates are.

Each WomanSafeHealth team member acts as a woman advocate for every client that comes to WomanSafeHealth. The following woman advocates are available to accompany you to medical visits outside WomanSafeHealth and be an empowering member of your healthcare team. If you have had a new diagnosis of an illness, you would like more emotional support at a long or short visit, or if your usual support person is unable to be present, call to find out the availability and skills of a WomanSafeHealth Woman Advocate.

One of the most important services a woman advocate can provide is active, empathetic listening. Active listening includes the listener asking clarifying questions and summarizing what she has heard to increase accuracy. Empathetic listening includes hearing the emotions behind the words. Depending on how a woman seeking medical care feels, she may not remember accurately what was said or may hear only a portion. It is a woman advocate’s job to be the person who catches the information and is able to pass it back to her. Woman advocates should not attempt to make a woman’s decisions for her, set the tone or mood of the appointment, tell their own stories or assume power.