The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing lifelong healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics located throughout the country. Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance. The VA also provides burial and memorial benefits to eligible veterans and family members at 135 national cemeteries.
The American Medical Association (AMA) is an American professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 in 2022.
Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America is an American Jewish volunteer women's organization. Founded in 1912 by Henrietta Szold, it is one of the largest international Jewish organizations, with nearly 300,000 members in the United States. Hadassah fundraises for community programs and health initiatives in Israel, including the Hadassah Medical Organization, two leading research hospitals in Jerusalem. In the US, the organization advocates on behalf of women's rights, religious autonomy and US–Israel diplomacy. In Israel, Hadassah supports health education and research, women's initiatives, schools and programs for underprivileged youth.
The National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers was established on March 3, 1865, in the United States by Congress to provide care for volunteer soldiers who had been disabled through loss of limb, wounds, disease, or injury during service in the Union forces in the American Civil War. Initially, the Asylum, later called the Home, was planned to have three branches: in the Northeast, in the central area north of the Ohio River, and in what was then considered the Northwest, the present upper Midwest.
The American National Red Cross is a nonprofit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. Clara Barton founded the organization in 1881 after initially learning of the Red Cross from the country of Switzerland. Barton resigned in 1904 with Mabel Thorp Boardman taking control soon after. It is the designated US affiliate of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the United States movement to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The most important periods of operation for these units were during World War I and World War II. Although VADs were intimately bound up in the war effort, they were not military nurses, as they were not under the control of the military, unlike the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service, and the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. The VAD nurses worked in field hospitals, i.e., close to the battlefield, and in longer-term places of recuperation back in Britain.
Women in World War I were mobilized in unprecedented numbers on all sides. The vast majority of these women were drafted into the civilian work force to replace conscripted men or to work in greatly expanded munitions factories. Thousands served in the military in support roles, and in some countries many saw combat as well.
Esther Pohl Lovejoy was an American physician and public health pioneer, suffrage activist, congressional candidate, and a central figure in early efforts to organize international medical relief work. In 1907, Lovejoy became the first woman appointed to direct a department of health in a major U.S city: the Board of Health in Portland, Oregon. Lovejoy worked on the women's suffrage campaigns in Oregon in 1906 and 1912, and founded the Everybody's Equal Suffrage League ahead of the 1912 election, when Oregon became the 7th state to grant women the right to vote. Lovejoy was among the founders of the Medical Women's International Association and was elected as its first president in 1919. Lovejoy ran for the U.S. Congress in 1920 as the Democratic candidate for Portland’s Third District but was not successful against the sitting Republican. She was awarded the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal by the American Medical Women's Association in 1951 and 1957 for contributions to the field of medicine. On July 21, 2012, the Century of Action Committee honored her and three other suffragists—Harriet Redmond, Harry Lane, and Martha Cardwell Dalton—by installing new headstones for them at the Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery, where their initial headstones had become overgrown. The installation ceremony included costumed portrayals of the four suffragists and was attended by Barbara Roberts, a former Oregon governor. This event took place as part of the Century of Action Committee's year-long celebration of 100 years of suffrage for women in Oregon and as part of their efforts to call attention to remaining voting barriers for minorities.
The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) is a Canadian non-profit mental health organization that focuses on resources, programs and advocacy. It was founded on April 22, 1918, by Clarence M. Hincks and Clifford W. Beers. Originally named the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene, it is one of the largest and oldest voluntary health organizations operating in Canada.
Soroka University Medical Center, a part of the Clalit Health Services Group, is the general hospital of Beersheba, Israel, it serves as the central hospital of the region and provides medical services to approximately one million residents of the South, from Kiryat Gat and Ashkelon to Eilat. Soroka has 1,191 hospital beds, and is spread over 291 dunams in the center of Beer-Sheva.
Healthcare in Israel is universal and participation in a medical insurance plan is compulsory. All Israeli residents are entitled to basic health care as a fundamental right. The Israeli healthcare system is based on the National Health Insurance Law of 1995, which mandates all citizens resident in the country to join one of four official health insurance organizations, known as Kupat Holim which are run as not-for-profit organizations and are prohibited by law from denying any Israeli resident membership. Israelis can increase their medical coverage and improve their options by purchasing private health insurance. In a survey of 48 countries in 2013, Israel's health system was ranked fourth in the world in terms of efficiency, and in 2014 it ranked seventh out of 51. In 2020, Israel's health system was ranked third most efficient in the world. In 2015, Israel was ranked sixth-healthiest country in the world by Bloomberg rankings and ranked eighth in terms of life expectancy.
The Ukrainian Red Cross Society is a non-profit humanitarian and charitable association of Ukraine. It operates in disaster management, health and care, tracing service, youth activities/volunteers, and activities related to the protection of human dignity. Since 1993, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society has been a member of the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies.
The Swiss Red Cross, or SRC, is the national Red Cross society for Switzerland.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker)-founded organization working for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world. AFSC was founded in 1917 as a combined effort by American members of the Religious Society of Friends to assist civilian victims of World War I. It continued to engage in relief action in Europe and the Soviet Union after the Armistice of 1918. By the mid-1920s, AFSC focused on improving racial relations, immigration policy, and labor conditions in the U.S., as well as exploring ways to prevent the outbreak of another conflict before and after World War II. As the Cold War developed, the organization began to employ more professionals rather than Quaker volunteers. Over time, it broadened its appeal and began to respond more forcefully to racial injustice, international peacebuilding, migration and refugee issues, women's issues, and the demands of sexual minorities for equal treatment. Currently, the organization's three priorities include work on peacebuilding, a focus on just economies, and humane responses to the global migration crisis.
Mental health in the Philippines is a survey of the status of psychological, psychiatric, and emotional health care in the Philippines from both past and present programs.
The Library War Service was established by the American Library Association in 1917 to provide library services to American soldiers training in camps and serving overseas in World War I. ALA President Walter Lewis Brown initiated a partnership between the American Library Association and the Library of Congress. Between 1917 and 1920, the ALA raised $5 million from public donations, erected 36 camp libraries, distributed 7 to 10 million books and magazines, and provided library collections to more than 500 locations, including military hospitals. The Library War Service also provided books in Braille to soldiers that were blinded in battle. Library War Service librarians wore uniforms, similar to those worn by other volunteer groups like the American Red Cross, and the Library War Service provides some of the earliest examples of women participating in uniformed war service overseas. Millions of public libraries in the United States also participated in Library War Service activities, serving as collection points for books as well as places to organize and promote the War Service campaign. The efforts of the Library War Service eventually led to the creation of many modern library services, including the creation of library departments in the Army, Navy, Veterans' Association and Merchant Marine, as well as the establishment of the American Library in Paris, which remains the largest English-language lending library on the European continent today.
Rosalie Slaughter Morton was an American physician, surgeon, and author. In addition to running her own medical practices, she became the first woman appointed as Attending Surgeon at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1916, and became the first chairperson of the American Women's Hospitals Service the following year. Morton served as a medic during the First World War, and was the first chair of the Public Health Education Committee. She was also one of the first women to join the faculty, and to later become a professor, at the Polyclinic Hospital of New York.
Kate Breckenridge Karpeles was an American medical doctor. She was the first woman to be appointed a contract surgeon by the United States Army, during World War I, and she served as president of the American Medical Women's Association.
The Woman's Improvement Club of Indianapolis, Indiana, was formed in 1903 by Lillian Thomas Fox, Beulah Wright Porter, and other prominent African American women as a small literary group to improve their education, but it was especially active and best known for its pioneering efforts to provide facilities to care for the city's African American tuberculosis patients from 1905 to the mid-1930s. The clubwomen also supported the war effort during World War I and provided social service assistance to Indianapolis's impoverished residents and its African American youth. By 1960, when tuberculosis was no longer a major health threat, the club continued its support of the local black community in other ways, such as a visiting nurse program and scholarships to students graduating from Crispus Attucks High School students. In the mid-1960s, after its membership significantly declined, its records were donated to the Indiana Historical Society.
Mary Riggs Noble was an American physician, hospital administrator, public health educator, and state official. She also served as a Christian medical missionary in Ludhiana, India. She was the first recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal in 1949.
