Women's Midlife Health

Pain at Midlife: Impact on Health and Health Behaviors

Women's Midlife Health is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special theme issue on Pain at Midlife: Impact on Health and Health Behaviors. Guest edited by Carol Derby and Jelena Pavlovic (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), this special issue will highlight the problem of pain in midlife and its impact on health and health behaviors during the midlife years and as women age. We are looking for papers that address the incidence and prevalence of pain in the midlife, risk factors for pain at this life stage, and its impact on physical and psychological health. Papers addressing how pain may alter physical, psychological, social and cognitive function as well as how it may change health behaviors are also of interest. Papers characterizing care seeking and treatment patterns, including under-treatment or over-treatment are also of interest. We request that papers be submitted by August 15th, 2018. Papers can be submitted here.

Thematic Series: Stress in Midlife

This series highlights key questions confronting women and clinicians regarding stress and its impact on health and functioning during the midlife years.

Thematic Series: Contraception in Midlife

This series highlights key questions facing women and clinicians regarding pregnancy and contraceptive choices.

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.

Content type: Study protocol
| 27 April 2018

Prophylactic salpingo-oophorectomy & surgical menopause for inherited risks of cancer: the need to identify biomarkers to assess the theoretical risk of premature coronary artery disease

Authors: Zarah Batulan, Nadia Maarouf, Vipul Shrivastava and Edward O’Brien
Content type: Research
| 10 April 2018

Bone mineral density in midlife long-term users of hormonal contraception in South Africa: relationship with obesity and menopausal status

Authors: Mags E. Beksinska, Immo Kleinschmidt and Jenni A. Smit
Content type: Research
| 9 April 2018

Work outcomes in midlife women: the impact of menopause, work stress and working environment

Authors: Claire Hardy, Eleanor Thorne, Amanda Griffiths and Myra S. Hunter
Content type: Research
| 16 March 2018

Perceived stress across the midlife: longitudinal changes among a diverse sample of women, the Study of Women’s health Across the Nation (SWAN)

Authors: Elizabeth Hedgeman, Rebecca E. Hasson, Carrie A. Karvonen-Gutierrez, William H. Herman and Siobán D. Harlow
Content type: Commentary
| 16 March 2018

Stress and midlife women’s health

Authors: Lynnette Leidy Sievert, Nicole Jaff and Nancy Fugate Woods

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Content type: Editorial
| 11 August 2015

Women’s Midlife Health: Why the Midlife Matters

Authors: Siobán D. Harlow and Carol A. Derby
Content type: Review
| 11 August 2015

Depression in the menopause transition: risks in the changing hormone milieu as observed in the general population

Authors: Ellen W. Freeman
Content type: Research
| 9 June 2016

Chronic vulvar pain in a cohort of post-menopausal women: Atrophy or Vulvodynia?

Authors: Susanna D. Mitro, Siobán D. Harlow, John F. Randolph and Barbara D. Reed
Content type: Review
| 14 September 2015

Impact of urinary incontinence on female sexual health in women during midlife

Authors: Christine M. Chu, Lily A. Arya and Uduak U. Andy
Content type: Review
| 2 December 2015

Rheumatic autoimmune diseases in women and midlife health

Authors: Wendy Marder, Évelyne Vinet and Emily C. Somers

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Women's Midlife Health is published continuously online-only. We encourage you to sign up to receive free email alerts to keep up to date with all of the latest articles by registering here.

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.

Women's Midlife Health

Pain at Midlife: Impact on Health and Health Behaviors

Thematic Series: Stress in Midlife

Thematic Series: Contraception in Midlife

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

Articles

Prophylactic salpingo-oophorectomy & surgical menopause for inherited risks of cancer: the need to identify biomarkers to assess the theoretical risk of premature coronary artery disease

Bone mineral density in midlife long-term users of hormonal contraception in South Africa: relationship with obesity and menopausal status

Work outcomes in midlife women: the impact of menopause, work stress and working environment

Perceived stress across the midlife: longitudinal changes among a diverse sample of women, the Study of Women’s health Across the Nation (SWAN)

Stress and midlife women’s health