Organizing

NAPW engages in both local grassroots organizing and national grasstops organizing. Two principles guie all NAPW activities: to build bridges and align agenda across diverse public health and social justice movements, and to leverage and connect local organizing and activism with national advocacy and policy work. NAPW has a national network of over 2000 local and national activists and resource contacts engaged in organizing, public education, political action and media outreach. NAPW organizes grassroots women's health activists, women in recovery, local healthcare providers, and state policymakers to mobilize around a shift from criminal justice to a public health approach to the intersecting issues of pregnancy, drug use, risk of HIV infection and transmission and unaddressed mental health issues. NAPW recognizes that if the criminalization of pregnant women is to be stopped, the impetus has to come from the women and communities most affected by it - women of color, poor women, women who use drugs or are in recovery and women and families who need reproductive health services.