
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 20, 1991                   TAG: 9104200038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

NIH TO RESEARCH WOMEN'S HEALTH

The government said Friday it will launch the most far-reaching study of female health ever undertaken, involving hundreds of thousands of women.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, the new director of the National Institutes of Health, said the study would look at the major causes of illness and death in women: cancer, heart disease, stroke and osteoporosis.

"Women have a right to know how they can prevent and ameliorate the health problems attendant to growing older," Healy told a Senate subcommittee. "The new initiative . . . will go far toward providing these answers."

Healy said recent years have brought "an important awakening to a simple fact, namely, women have unique medical problems that need greater attention." She said women experience more disease and debilitating illness than men.

"The good news is that women live longer. The bad news is that their quality of life, from a medical and behavioral perspective, is not what it could be," she said.

by CNB