August 21st, 2010

On August 12, 2010 Dr. Roseanna Means was selected to receive the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 2010 Community Health Leaders Award.  This prestigious award is given annually to ten leaders who have created innovative improvements in community health care.

From 1990-1998, Dr. Roseanna Means, a practicing Internist in the Boston area, worked for a program that operates health clinics for the homeless. She observed that homeless women were underrepresented at the clinics and learned that using traditional health care access venues, even when staffed by doctors trained in caring for the homeless, is overwhelming for women impaired by exhaustion, mental illness and fear. Consequently in 1999, Dr. Means founded "Women of Means" to improve the lives of women who are homeless or marginally housed through quality health care, education and advocacy”, with a vision of bringing free, quality health care to women and children in shelters. Since that time, she has worked day and night to make that vision a reality. Along the way, she has touched countless patients, co-workers and volunteers with her warmth, optimism and can-do spirit. Women of Means sends volunteer physicians and staff nurses into shelters in and around Boston.