Hysterectomy Educational Resources and Services (HERS) Foundation

The Hysterectomy Educational Resources & Services (HERS) Foundation is an independent non-profit international women’s health educational advocacy organization [1][2]. The stated mission of the organization is to give women a greater voice within the healthcare system by education and advocacy programs. HERS is financially supported by the thousands of individuals who use their services and specifically denies contributions from pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers. The HERS Foundation researches and testifies before federal agencies on such issues as drug and medical device reporting and informed consent for gynecological procedures and surgeries. HERS Newsletter provides health information on a variety of women’s health interests. They are dedicated to making information available and accessible to every individual, regardless of their ability to pay.

The HERS Foundation was established in 1982 by Nora W. Coffey and Helen E. Plotkin, as a group to provide information about the alternatives to hysterectomy and the effects of the surgery. It quickly broadened to address a wide variety of women’s health issues and became a clearinghouse for women’s health information and advocacy.

In 2004, HERS led the first ever nationwide protest against hospitals in every state for a week for a year. In 2007 HERS organized opposition to National Public Radio (NPR) for allowing the underwriting on their air waves of an advertisement for robotic hysterectomy which resulted in NPR withdrawing the ad.

HERS has counseled more than 875,000 individuals and provided information to millions more worldwide via broadcast, print and the World Wide Web. The organization’s website is multilingual, offered in English, French and German. [3]

The foundation’s purpose is to provide comprehensive information about treatment alternatives and the effects of hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) and female castration (removal of the gonads, the ovaries). They help individual women worldwide by providing one-on-one telephone counseling, physician referrals, litigation support, a free lending library of books, scripts, videos, and DVD’s, 6,000 annotated medical journal articles, woman-to-woman networking, newsletters, informational pamphlets in English and Spanish, lectures and annual regional conferences [4][5]. HERS is committed to the ideal that every woman has the right to the information required to make her own healthcare decisions. They encourage women to have candid discussions with their physicians about the effects of medical treatment and surgery. They raise public awareness of the large number of hysterectomies being performed without the information requisite for informed consent.

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Wikipedia