The HER Foundation: Kimber Wakefield McGibbon

By OBOS — April 1, 2009

From 2009 – 2011, Our Bodies Ourselves honored the work of women’s health advocates worldwide by asking readers to nominate their favorite women’s health hero. View all nominees by year: 2009, 2010, 2011

Entrant: Penny Richards

Nominee: Kimber Wakefield McGibbon, founder of the HER Foundation

Registered nurse Kimber Wakefield McGibbon started the HER Foundation in 2000, after her own first experience with severe hyperemesis gravidarum, the extreme and hazardous “morning sickness” that some women (including me) experience in pregnancy. HER Foundation and the website (HelpHER.org) came too late to help me through my own two rounds of HG, but not too late to give me a chance to offer peer support to other women.

Last year, I visited a woman before her hospitalization for HG treatment — we sat in her bedroom, talked, laughed, grimaced, and marveled that it took an international organization to bring us together, two mothers, two PhDs, two HG veterans, living in the same neighborhood.

I am so heartened to know that women with HG today have a place to go, and people who really do understand. McGibbon is also an advocate for research and awareness on the subject of HG.

For more information: www.hyperemesis.org

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