by Judy Waxman, Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights

On Thursday, we’ll be releasing the 2010 edition of Making the Grade on Women’s Health: A National and State-by-State Report Card, the fifth women’s health report card in a decade-long series assessing the overall health of women at the national and state levels.

When NWLC and its partners launched the Report Card project to evaluate the state of women’s health across the country, it was in part as a response to the failure to pass comprehensive health care reform in the mid-90s. With a grim outlook for health care progress at the federal level, we needed a tool that would help advocates, researchers, and policymakers push for improvements in women’s health at the state level (while continuing to promote national change). The Report Card is that tool — it grades each state and the nation on a set of health status indicators and evaluates state progress (or decline) in adopting laws and policies that support women’s health.

Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a mix of improvement and deterioration on the issues our Report Card examines; the overall message of each edition has been consistent — the nation and the states must do so much more to support women’s health. What is so exciting about the 2010 Report Card is that it includes a special feature on a monumental development that is sure to lead to major improvements in women’s health and well-being — our new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). There are still huge gains to be made but as we look toward the future of women’s health, we know that the ACA will be seen as a turning point in women’s health and well-being across the country.

Check back later this week, as we’ll be sharing more insights on changes in women’s health in the past ten years; how the ACA will continue to improve women’s health; what the recent release of Healthy People 2020 (which establishes a new framework and goals for national health) means for women’s health; which states have been the most (and least) successful in supporting women’s health; and many others.

Also, register for our Making the Grade on Women's Health webinar, taking place Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:00 PM EST to learn more about the findings in our report.