American Women's Hospitals Service

The American Women's Hospitals Service (AWHS) is a charitable organization that promotes the relief of suffering worldwide by supporting independent clinics to provide care to high risk populations and by providing travel grants to medical students and residents to perform clinical projects abroad in under-served areas.

In 1917 the Medical Women's National Association (which was later renamed AMWA) established a war service committee in order to create a census of the medical women in the country and to plan how to apply their resources to the war effort.

[1] In its first year, AWH partnered with the Red Cross and civilian medical organizations to send abroad 62 AWH volunteer doctors as well as 30 technicians and lay workers to France, Serbia, Palestine and Greece.

[1] Although the armistice was signed a year later, the ensuing local wars, revolutions, earthquakes, famine and millions of destitute refugees meant that medical assistance remained urgently needed around the world.

AWH expanded its service at home and multiple countries abroad in order to address the thousands who looked for help.