Women's health centers and minority women: Addressing barriers to care. The National Centers of Excellence in Women's Health

New models of care delivery have been developed to better coordinate and in tegrate healthcare for women. In the United States, one of the challenges i s to incorporate the needs of racial and ethnic minority populations into t hese newer care paradigms. This paper begins with a brief historical review of the experience of racial and ethnic minorities in the American healthca re system to provide a context for discussing barriers and limitations of m ore traditional models of women's healthcare. Specific approaches used by N ational Centers of Excellence in Women's Health are presented as examples o f strategies that may be implemented by other communities to address these barriers.