Cottage Health is working to bring more attention to women’s health by creating a better healthcare system for women.
Dr. Jane Varner was recently named medical director of Cottage Health’s growing center for women’s health.
“It’s incredibly exciting for me,” Varner said. “I absolutely love women, and so to be in a role where I get to champion women’s health is like a dream come true for me.”
The women’s health center is meant to offer a coordinated healthcare experience in a supportive environment, providing primary and specialty care that’s backed by research.
Cottage already offers numerous women’s health services related to menopause, contraception, chronic diseases and diabetes, and other services, but the center is meant to organize those services around patients in a seamless and integrated experience.
Dr. Helen Matthews, medical director of Cottage Health’s OB-GYN clinic, said she’s excited to see Varner leading the women’s health center and bringing more attention to women’s health.
“She has a long career of experience in directing large projects for health systems to deliver healthcare better to the patients they serve,” Matthews said. “I think that is really needed here to interact with the donors and the board to help guide all this energy that is present in the community into something great for women.”
Varner has 25 years of experience as a family physician. She joined Cottage Health in 2024 as the medical director for Cottage Primary Care, overseeing the department’s expansion to 20 providers across four clinical locations.
In 2027, Varner said they want to open a physical space for the center, centralizing core services such as OB-GYN care and pelvic floor care. Additionally, Cottage plans to offer digital services that will give patients accurate information about their health conditions.
“We really want to curate some of that content and create a very trusted source of truth in a digital space, as well as a physical campus where women can get care,” Varner said.
The planning for a physical center is in the very early stages, but Varner said they are looking to open it near Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital at 400 Pueblo St. in existing Cottage Health facilities sometime in 2027.
“We are hoping that we’ll be able to identify enough spaces so that we will be able to sort of create a consolidated campus,” Varner said. “The dream is at some point to build a whole center and have two or three floors, and it will be all women’s health, but that’s probably somewhere between five and 10 years away.”
Looking to the future, Varner said she hopes the center can include a community classroom, providing a space to host cooking and exercise demos.
Varner also hopes that the center can help facilitate more research into women’s health, something she said is desperately needed as only 10% of research funds from the National Institutes of Health go toward women’s health conditions.
Cottage plans to do its own research projects, but Varner said she also wants to collaborate with UC Santa Barbara, specifically Dr. Emily Jacobs, who is leading the Women’s Brain Health Initiative.
“I think we’re really sort of looking forward to building really long and meaningful partnerships between the Women’s Brain Health Initiative here on the UCSB side of things, and then the Cottage women’s health services,” Jacobs said. “It’s all towards this common cause of advancing women’s health, whether that’s maternal research and care, whether that’s menopause-related research and care. There are just so many incredible opportunities.”
Jacobs added that she’s excited to see Santa Barbara leading the charge on women’s health.
“I think it’s timely, and I think the leadership that they’ve tapped are exactly the right people to lead this and to see this vision come to life,” Jacobs said.
As Cottage works on developing the women’s health center, Varner said she welcomes community input on how they can better serve patients.
“It’s really important to me that this doesn’t feel like an exclusive thing that Cottage is doing over here,” Varner said, “but really something that we are building for the community, not only for patients, but also for providers of care.”
The Cottage Center for Women’s Health is hosting a free virtual panel with Varner and other women’s health professionals to talk more about how they plan to approach women’s health services.
