WHA includes eight locations that provide full scope obstetrics, gynecology and wellness care under the banner of Women’s Healthcare Associates. We also have two Northwest Gynecology Center offices that provide advanced gynecology and wellness care and two Northwest Perinatal Center locations dedicated to high-risk obstetrics. And though we have positions that are site-specific and ones that are designed to go where the need is—we pride ourselves on close collaboration and supporting one another.

Our reputation is built from the inside out on the foundation of a shared reason for being: every person should have the care and knowledge they need to lead a full and healthy life. On their terms, the way they define it. Recognizing their unique identity, lived experience, personal values, and daily realities. We believe we are strongest when each of us is able to connect our personal why to our shared why. Our “Pause for Purpose” is one of the ways we remind ourselves to do just that. Another: each of our offices has its own budget for community involvement allowing us to live our why locally and have an impact beyond our clinic walls.

Our medical specialty might be the uterus, but our focus is the whole person and meeting their needs throughout life and its many transitions. Our team includes 120 clinicians (give or take) plus 400 technicians and staff all dedicated to supporting that journey: obstetrics, gynecology and nurse-midwifery—plus maternal-fetal medicine, perinatal genetics, urogynecology, behavioral and mental health therapy, ultrasound, mammography, office surgery….you get the idea. We value the contributions of each department, each specialty, each role, and each person—and believe different perspectives and voices make us all better.

Fostering an inclusive culture that values the seen and unseen dimensions of diversity enhances our ability to develop and attract the best people, provide the best care to all we serve, and positively impact the communities where we live and work. This is an active, daily practice and in 2020, like so many, we realized ours was inadequate. Today, we have three active employee resource groups, we have completed unconscious bias training for our existing workforce, we have contracted with an outside organization to provide more advanced ongoing training, and our first ever BIPOC patient advisory council is preparing to make its first round of recommendations. We’re not patting ourselves on the back—but we are excited for what the future holds as diversity, equity, and inclusion become more and more how we do what we do.

Speaking of the future, you’ve probably gathered standing still isn’t our thing. We were among the first healthcare providers in Portland to effect a large-scale response to COVID-19, moving within days to consolidate our operations, control the spread of infection, put systems in place to conserve PPE and launch telehealth. Even when we’re not facing a global pandemic, looking for ways to do things better and more efficiently for the benefit of our patients and our workforce is just part of our DNA. From transitioning to a new electronic medical record, to developing our own comprehensive patient wellbeing assessment, to launching Portland’s first integrated out-of-hospital birth center—we are not afraid of hard things. People who are always looking for ways to do things better are our people.

Improvement isn’t just an organizational thing. Here, you’ll be supported as you grow and develop personally and professionally. Starting on day one, we understand one of the keys to a long and successful tenure is having the understanding, knowledge and skills you need to do the job—and to do the next job when the opportunity arises. Comprehensive onboarding and job training, annual continuing education budgets, internal formal and informal training, and opportunities to get involved that go beyond the day-to-day (think: employee resource groups, initiative development teams, committees, preceptorships, etc.) enrich our work lives.