I’m coming to the NWRPCA/CHAMPS conference with a big goal: help bring better women’s health training to every federally qualified health center in the country. I believe FQHCs should be the first place women turn for exceptional care throughout their lives. We have longstanding relationships with families, a commitment to people who face barriers to care, and teams who understand how much happens outside an exam room. That gives us an opportunity to improve women’s healthcare in ways that reach well beyond any single appointment.
It also means taking a broader view of what women’s health includes. Pregnancy and childbirth deserve excellent care, and so do the many years of a woman’s life before, between, and after those experiences. A teenager missing school because of period pain needs someone prepared to take that seriously. A woman whose pelvic pain affects her work, relationships, or ability to care for her family needs a plan. Someone navigating perimenopause or menopause deserves a thoughtful conversation about what is changing and what support might help. These concerns belong in the everyday work of primary care, with teams who have the training and referral relationships to respond.
As CEO of Heritage Health in North Idaho, I know how much we already ask of community health centers. Our teams manage complex needs, limited resources, and the daily challenge of helping people get care in places where the next available specialist may be a long drive and a long wait away. I believe better preparation in women’s health belongs among our priorities because these patients are already walking through our doors. The question is whether we are ready for the conversations they need to have.
Why this became personal
I recognize that I’m a guy asking a room full of healthcare professionals to think more deeply about women’s health. That deserves some explanation, and mine starts with my wife, Kellie, and our daughter, Sam. Both live with endometriosis. Watching them navigate pain, delayed diagnosis, and the experience of trying to make someone understand what was happening changed me as a husband and a father. It also forced me to look more closely at the healthcare system I help lead.
When someone you love is hurting, you pay attention to the whole experience. You notice what it takes to prepare for an appointment, how much hope can ride on a conversation, and what happens at home afterward. You see the work of remembering symptoms, explaining a history, arranging schedules, and deciding whether to try again after a disappointing visit. You begin to understand how much energy someone can spend simply trying to reach the point where care begins.
I had spent years working to improve access to healthcare. My family helped me see how access can still fall short once someone gets into the room. An appointment matters, but so does whether the person leaves with an understanding of the next step, a plan for follow-up, and confidence that someone took her concerns seriously. Those experiences raised questions I could not leave at home when I went to work.
They also helped inspire my book, Believe Her the First Time. Writing it gave me a way to explore what families need to understand about endometriosis and what support requires of us. I continued that work through Man vs. Menopause, because partners have learning to do across other stages of women’s health, too. I include myself in that group. Loving someone gives you a reason to learn, and it comes with a responsibility to keep learning.
What a global community has taught me
Through my EndoDad advocacy on Instagram, I’ve connected with people living with endometriosis and the families who love them around the world. Those connections have expanded my understanding beyond what happened in my own family. People bring different experiences, healthcare systems, resources, and expectations to these conversations. They also describe familiar struggles with explaining pain, seeking answers, and trying to maintain an ordinary life while care remains uncertain.
I’m careful about what my role is in that community. Women living with these conditions bring expertise about their own lives that I need to hear. My responsibility is to listen, learn, and consider what I can do with the influence I have as a partner, parent, author, and healthcare leader. When people share something painful, I want that trust to lead to something useful.
That is why the women’s health advocacy page on MikeBakerHQ.com matters so much to me. It brings together practical support for people living with endometriosis, the people beside them, and leaders who want to examine how care can improve. It grew out of questions our family needed help answering and conversations with others facing similar challenges. My hope is that visitors find something they can use in an appointment, at home, or in their own organization.
For conference attendees, I encourage you to explore that page before we meet. Read it with a patient’s experience in mind, then consider how someone would move through your health center. Where would she explain her concerns? Who would help her understand the next step? What would happen if the referral stalled or the first plan did not help? Those questions make a useful starting point for the work we can do together.
What the front door to care needs from us
In my plenary, I’ll talk about the front door to women’s healthcare because primary care and pediatrics are often where concerns first surface. Someone may mention pain during a routine visit, bring up symptoms while discussing something else, or finally find the words for a problem she has been managing for years. Our response at that moment can influence what happens next.
Better training can help teams recognize concerns they need to explore and understand the limits of what they know. It can give clinicians greater confidence in evaluating symptoms and knowing when additional expertise is needed. It can also help the people answering phones, scheduling appointments, and supporting visits understand why a concern deserves attention. Patients experience our organizations through many people, and each interaction can affect whether they feel able to keep asking for help.
At Heritage Health, we’re early in this work. We’re building and learning as we go, with a focus on training primary care and pediatric teams, asking better questions about periods and midlife symptoms, and improving referral follow-through. We’re also thinking about how education with families and community partners can support what happens in the clinic. I want to share that work honestly, including what we still need to learn.
Better questions are one place to begin. A conversation about symptoms becomes more useful when we understand how they affect school, work, sleep, relationships, and daily activities. Patients need room to explain that impact, and our teams need a way to carry the information into decisions and follow-up. The details someone shares should help shape what happens next.
Referral processes deserve the same attention. In rural communities, a referral can involve travel, time away from work, childcare, cost, and limited availability. We need to understand where people encounter those barriers and who takes responsibility for helping them move forward. When a patient cannot complete the next step, that information should return to the team caring for her so the conversation can continue.
Women’s health across a lifetime
I want this effort to include endometriosis, perimenopause, and menopause because each deserves thoughtful attention in community health. They are different clinical subjects, and our teams need education that respects those differences. They also invite us to examine a broader question: how well do we respond when a woman describes changes in her body that are disrupting her life?
The women’s health section of my website extends that conversation into perimenopause and menopause, with resources for patients and the people supporting them. I encourage attendees to spend time there alongside the advocacy page. Together, they reflect the larger view of women’s health I hope we bring into our organizations, including the questions patients may find difficult to raise and the support families may struggle to provide.
Our role in community health gives us a chance to support these conversations over time. We may care for someone through adolescence, adulthood, and midlife. That continuity matters when symptoms change, when a treatment plan needs review, or when someone needs help connecting with another part of the healthcare system. We can build on those relationships by preparing our teams to recognize and respond to women’s health needs throughout life.
Why I want to build this with you
Returning to Salt Lake City for this conference means a great deal to me. This is my hometown, and my community health family at CHC, Inc., AUCH, and Midtown CHC helped me get started in this work. They shaped my understanding of what health centers can mean to a community and how much committed people can accomplish together. Coming home to talk about this goal feels connected to everything they helped teach me.
NWRPCA and CHAMPS bring together organizations with experience we can learn from. Some centers already have training, referral relationships, or approaches to patient education that could help others. Some are identifying gaps and trying to decide where to begin. I want this plenary to help us find each other, compare what we are learning, and consider how a shared regional effort could contribute to better preparation across the country.
Before the talk, I invite you to think about one part of your own organization’s care that you want to understand better. It might be how adolescents with period pain reach the right clinician, how your teams approach menopause conversations, or what happens after a referral leaves your system. Bring that question with you, along with anything your center has developed that others could learn from.
Afterward, I hope you’ll keep the conversation going. Visit my women’s health advocacy page, explore the resources, and share what is useful with your team. Connect with me through MikeBakerHQ.com or on Instagram at @endodad76. I want to hear what your community needs and where collaboration could help.
This goal matters to me because I know some of the people whose lives it could change. My family brought me into this work, and a global community has deepened my commitment to it. Women are already coming to our health centers looking for help. We have to get this right, and I believe we can give our teams the preparation and support to do it.