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Frances Ashe-Goins’ distinguished career puts public health, nursing education to work for women’s health
November 18, 2010
Frances Ashe-Goins, who earned a
master’s degree from the Arnold School,
is the 2010 recipient of the University of South
Carolina Outstanding Black Alumni Award.
Growing up in Columbia as the eldest of five children, Frances E. Ashe-Goins believed that she was always destined to become a nurse.
“I was the one always fixing dolls with broken limbs by putting bandages on them, holding them tightly. I have always wanted to take care of people. As the eldest, my family looked to me to fulfill that role,” she said.
Turns out it was a wonderful career choice for both the nursing profession and for Ashe-Goins, who is the recipient of the 2010 recipient of the University of South Carolina Outstanding Black Alumni Award.
The award is presented to an alumnus or alumna with a record of excellence in his or her chosen field. Ashe-Goins earned a bachelor’s degree in 1970 and a master’s in 1975 from the College of Nursing. In 1980, she earned another master’s degree from the Arnold School of Public Health.
Today Ashe-Goins is making use of her nursing and public health education and training as the acting director for the Office on Women’s Health (OWH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
She is responsible for the overall functions of OWH and participates in the formulation of policies, goals, and activities related to women’s health. She also directs health policy analysis and program leadership in the nationwide women’s health program.
“I was thrilled,” Ashe-Goins said when she received word of the award. “I have received many awards but this one from my school is just fabulous. I am so happy to be recognized for achievements by my home state.”
Formerly, as the OWH deputy director and director of the division of policy and program development, she was responsible for numerous women’s health issues, including HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, rape/sexual assault, lupus awareness, diabetes, organ/tissue donation, minority women’s health, international health, female genital cutting, mental health, homelessness, young women’s health summits, and regional women’s health coordinator programs.
“I’ve always been involved with health promotion and disease prevention, which includes family and community health, but more recently women’s health. Typically, women make most of the health care choices for the family. In that way I am more recently involved in women’s health,” she said.
Ashe-Goins was born in the hospital at Fort Jackson and grew up in Columbia where she graduated from C.A. Johnson High School in 1966. She said she chose USC for her education because of the College of Nursing’s reputation.
“It was the fact that it was a place that I could focus on learning as much as I could, so I would be successful in my future endeavors,” Ashe-Goins said. “There were many people on whom I look back on fondly, and one of them is Donna Moss who was one of my first nursing instructors.”
Ashe-Goins has created many innovative programs to address HIV/AIDS, including the formation of the National Collaborative Workgroup on Women and HIV/AIDS, DHHS Secretary’s Workgroup on Women and HIV/AIDS, Incarcerated and Newly Released Women with HIV/AIDS/STD Program, Model Mentorship Program for Organizational Development, Women in Rural Communities and HIV/AIDS and Young Women Pilot Program.
With regard to violence against women, Ashe-Goins has created a number of programs, including National Nurses’ Task Force and National Nurses’ Summit on Violence Against Women, National Social Workers’ Task Force and National Social Workers’ Summit on Violence Against Women, DHHS National Domestic Violence Workplace Education Day (annually), DHHS Employee Guidelines on Domestic Violence, and the DHHS National Sexual Assault Awareness Month Event.
Through the Office of Women’s health she also initiated the Lupus Educational Awareness Project, which culminated in a Capitol Hill town hall seminar that received national media attention.
Currently she is the lead researcher for the highly successful National Lupus Awareness Campaign, targeted toward young minority women.
She developed the National Minority Women’s Health Summits in 1997, 2004, and 2007. The original Summit generated the Minority Women’s Health Panel of Experts, which comprises national leaders in minority women’s health issues and who advise OWH on its minority women’s health programs.
Ashe-Goins resides in Alexandria, Va., but she returns to USC each year as an adjunct professor at the Arnold School’s Department of Health Education, Promotion, and Education and the College of Nursing.
“It is part of my heritage,” Ashe-Goins said. “The education I received serves as a firm basis for my current successes.”
She and her husband, C. Gladwyn Goins, have a son and daughter, and a granddaughter.
