By Andrea Grant
noteworthy
Suffolk University has received an anonymous $2 million gift to endow its Center for Women’s Health & Human Rights, which will enable the center to carry on the mission of the path-breaking book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, through a reinvigorated Our Bodies Ourselves Today online platform providing information and resources on health and sexuality.
The Center for Women’s Health & Human Rights, founded in 2003 under the leadership of Sociology Professor Amy Agigian, is the first academic initiative in the United States to focus on women’s health as a human rights imperative.
“This transformative gift will help the center continue to advance its important mission for this and future generations,” says Suffolk University President Marisa Kelly. “We are grateful to the donor for making this remarkable investment in our College of Arts & Sciences to support the health and human rights of people everywhere.”
Our Bodies, Ourselves launched in 1970 as a groundbreaking 193-page work on women’s health and sexuality. Over the next 50-plus years millions of copies were printed in various editions, before the U.S. version ceased publication in 2018. That same year, however, the Center for Women’s Health & Human Rights entered into an agreement to create a new online platform, Our Bodies Ourselves Today.
The gift will help the center launch this platform, which will provide information on topics including reproduction, mental health, gender-based violence, and aging. The site will feature articles, videos, podcasts, first-person stories, and more, all curated and vetted by experts.
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Photograph by Michale J. Clarke
“All women, girls, and gender-expansive people deserve the most accurate, reliable information available when it comes to health and sexuality,” says Agigian. “This gift will help us to continue the legacy of providing information about these issues so critical to our freedom.”
For more information, visit www.ourbodiesourselvestoday.org.