Women's Midlife Health

Featured Article: "It is not just menopause: symptom clustering in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation"

Patterns of symptom clustering in midlife women may suggest common underlying mechanisms or may identify women at risk of adverse health outcomes or, conversely, likely to experience healthy aging. In this article, Siobán D. Harlow (University of Michigan) and co-authors assess symptom clustering longitudinally by stage of reproductive aging and estimate the probability of women experiencing specific symptom clusters. They also evaluate factors that influence the likelihood of specific symptom clusters and assess whether symptom clustering is associated with women’s self-reported health status.

Call for papers - Stress and Midlife Health thematic series

Women’s Midlife Health is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special theme issue on Stress and Midlife Health.

Guest edited by Nancy Fugate Woods (University of Washington School of Nursing), Nicole Jaff (University of the Witwatersrand) and Lynnette Leidy Sievert (University of Massachusetts Amherst), this special issue will highlight key questions confronting women and clinicians regarding stress and its impact on health and functioning during the midlife years.

We are looking for papers that address the impact of chronic stress across the life-course on ovarian aging and disease expression, including disparities in disease timing and prevalence, as well as papers addressing the nature and types of stressors experienced by women as they transition through midlife, including the role of menopause and menopausal symptoms. Papers may address acute or chronic stress, perceived stress or specific types of stress including financial difficulties, role stress, life events, discrimination, or abuse. Descriptive papers providing data on changing patterns of stressors or perceptions of stress, or analytical papers assessing stress and its relationship to aging, are welcome.

We request that papers be submitted by September 15, 2017. Papers can be submitted via Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/wmlh/default.aspx.

If you would like your article to be considered for the thematic series or would like more information, please contact stefanie.howard@biomedcentral.com.

Aims and scope

Women’s Midlife Health is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers original and review articles focused on the physical and mental health of women during midlife, including articles on aging, reproductive aging and their inter-relationship. The journal focuses on research that provides new insights into the health transitions that occur during midlife, welcoming research that examines the vulnerabilities and opportunities during this life stage and their consequences for healthy aging.

Women's Midlife Health aims to enhance understanding of the bi-directional relationships between changes in reproductive endocrinology and functioning, physical and mental health during midlife. It contributes to clinical and public health knowledge about common underling mechanisms of disease and functional decline and encourages submissions of translational research that may enhance opportunities for healthy aging.

The journal considers clinical and population-based research on health in the mid-life and its determinants and welcomes papers that provide international perspectives or data on the health of midlife women in low and middle income countries. Papers that consider the impact of the environment, occupation, and behavioural or social factors on health and disease processes during this lifestage are encouraged.

Topic areas include but are not restricted to

Aging
Arthritis and Bone Health
Cancer
Cardiovascular Health
Cognitive and Physical Functioning
Gynecology/ Reproductive Endocrinology
Nutrition/ Obesity Diabetes/ Metabolic Syndrome
Menopause, Ovarian Aging
Mental Health
Sexuality
Sleep
Quality of Life

About the Editor

Dr. Siobán D. Harlow, Editor-in-Chief

Siobán D. Harlow, PhD, is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Integrated Approaches to Complex Diseases at the University of Michigan and adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Michigan State University. She is Principal Investigator of the Michigan site of the 20–year multi-ethnic cohort Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) and for the SWAN Repository and chaired the 2011 consensus conference: “STRAW+10: Addressing the Unfinished Agenda of Staging Reproductive Aging”. From 2003–2009, she served on the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group, Division of Reproductive Health Research, World Health Organization.