Friday, Jun 15, 2007    Text size: 

“During our 30th anniversary year, Good Vibes continues our tradition of bringing valuable resources, accurate information and excellent products and services,” said Good Vibrations President and CEO Theresa Sparks. “'Women Like Me' is the latest in a 30- year journey of sexual exploration and freedom that we see not only as our mission, but our responsibility.”

“Women Like Me” will focus on individual topics dealing with sexuality and health concerns. The first subject category will be menopause, followed by body image and breast health awareness. Future topics will include alternative issues like polyamory, bisexuality, coming out issues, domestic abuse, single motherhood and sexual myths.

Good Vibrations’ Senior Director of E-Commerce and Merchandising Jonathan Plotzker said, “It’s kind of the manifestation of our educational mission alongside our retail mission.

“There’ll be a special section on the retail website all about ‘Women Like Me’ with specialists in various medical fields writing about these topics. We’ll also have special areas of our store set up that will display product appropriate to these topics, as well as pamphlets and take-away information. It’s almost like another brand under the Good Vibes umbrella, but it’s specifically about education,” said Plotzker.

Eventually, a website dedicated to the program will be launched.

The program site will offer resource guides, as well as interactive features like an “Ask the Doc” forum that will allow access to various medical professionals. In conjunction with UCSF’s Center of Excellence in Women’s Healthcare , the site also will utilize live webcast programming and GVTV video shorts featuring interviews with health experts, celebrities and program participants.

The program is being developed as a collaboration between Good Vibrations and several other prominent health organizations including the University of California, San Francisco National Center of Excellence in Women’s Healthcare, California Pacific Medical Center and Lyon-Martin Health Services , to name a few. Activist organizations involved in the project include the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Center for Sex and Culture .

“’Women Like Me’ stands to become a landmark program. I am delighted to be involved and to lend my voice to this initiative,” said Lyon-Martin Health Services Executive Director Dr. Dawn S. Harbatkin, M.D. “I am going to encourage all of my patients to make use of the informative articles and resource lists, as well as the interactive workshops and discussion groups offered. As this innovative program unfolds, I look forward to seeing the difference it will make in their lives.”

Good Vibrations made the announcement on June 13 at a performance of “Menopause, the Musical” which was held as a fund-raising event for Lyon-Martin Health Service where more than $10,000 was raised for the non-profit women’s clinic.

Plotzker said that a press event would be scheduled to formally launch the program, tentatively slated to take place in July.