Center for Global Women's Health

The Center for Global Women's Health (CGWH) is an interdisciplinary collection of faculty and students who collaborate on women’s health scholarship, education, and clinical practice relevant to global issues. Faculty practice and programs of research use a health equity framework with a focus on social justice. 

Faculty programs of research reside in three domains: Safety from Violence and Harm; Equity, Empowerment, and Advocacy; and Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Faculty work to promote the health and well-being of women and girls, recognizing that as the health of women goes, so goes the health of the world.

Penn Nursing Professor Marilyn (Lynn) Sommers, PhD, RN, FAAN, is Director of the Center for Global Women’s Health. Her research focuses on risk-taking, injury, and violence in vulnerable populations. Dr. Sommers has changed the paradigm of the forensic sexual assault examination with her finding that skin injury prevalence after rape is higher in women with light as compared to dark skin, regardless of race/ethnicity. This work has illuminated new areas of science for explicating the role of injury in women after sexual assault.