Mission Statement

The Alexander Foundation for Women’s Health was created in January 2002 to promote public awareness and knowledge about the neuropsychiatric issues of menopause, post menopause and women's libido, so that women may benefit from improved health and sexual functioning throughout their lives. Since then the focus has broadened to include conditions and disease states that impact women’s quality of life or the quality of life of those they love, their children, husbands, partners, and family.

Education: Clinician and Patient/Consumer

One of the main goals of AFWH is to provide education to clinicians and patients on the complex areas of medicine and hormonal function that intersect a number of medical fields including psychiatry, gynecology, and endocrinology that are not ordinarily treated within one specialization. These areas include:

• Psychiatric illness in pregnancy and post partum
• Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
• Mood and the menopausal transition
• Sexual function and libido in menopause and beyond
• Mood issues with infertility treatments
• Cancers and their impact on Quality of Life
• Menopausal health issues (i.e. osteoporosis, incontinence, cognitive decline) and Quality of Life
• Psychiatric illness and Quality of Life
• Impact of stress, anxiety, and depression
• Special topics and issues of importance to women’s partners and children

Despite the sizeable population of mid life and post-menopausal women, there are insufficient resources focusing on issues of concern to women in these stages of life. To encourage development and dissemination of this important information, AFWH utilizes international experts to write articles and develops or negotiates access to existing topic-specific literature for the clinical community and general public not previously available from a single source.

The Alexander Foundation for Women’s Health serves both the clinician and the general public:

For clinicians: To increase understanding of reproductive psychiatry/gynecologic psychiatry and women’s health through books, conferences, lectures, peer reviewed articles in mainstream journals, earticles on the website, and professional resources. In 2006-2007 we launched CME for peer reviewed articles from major journals, articles written by the foundation, as well as case discussions.

For the general public and patient population: To increase the quality and quantity of information available to women to improve their well-being, health, sexual functioning, and mood by developing new articles about issues of concern to this population, e-articles along with an informative web-site, and other tools to help women be more informed and active in their own care.