Join us on Tuesday, March 8 at 5:30p.m. for Linda Robinson's talk "The History of Health Care for Women in the U.S.". This is a Women's History Month program celebrating this year's theme "Women: Providing Healing, Promoting Hope".

Women's health care and those who provide it have changed dramatically over the history of this country. Slavery, formal education for women, world politics, global and domestic economics, and many other factors have influenced the treatment of women in our health care system. Midwives, once the primary providers of women’s health care, were systematically eliminated in this country. This presentation will describe the history of women's health care, societal changes that shaped its delivery, and how these factors have impacted women’s lives. We will explore how ethnicity, economic status, geographical location, and allocation of resources all influence the culture of care for women.

Linda Robinson is a nurse midwife who was one of the founders of the Women’s Health Center in Bar Harbor. In addition to her twenty-three years there, she worked internationally in Malawi Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer; American Samoa where she started the first midwifery practice; and the Democratic Republic of Congo with Doctors without Borders.  She is the author of Sunday Morning Shamwana, A Midwife’s Letters From the Field, and has co-authored two other books, Being Pregnant, A Woman’s Answer Book, and Women’s Sexual Health. She has worked in women’s health care for thirty-six years, caring for women in all walks of life. She most recently worked in Malawi as visiting faculty, teaching midwifery at the Kamuzu College of Nursing.

Image: Linda with Midwifery Students in Malawi.