The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Study at the Health Science Center is holding its final reception for study participants in the landmark study from 5:30 to 9 p.m. March 24 in the auditorium. The evening will include valuable information, entertainment and food for an anticipated 600 guests.
Robert Brzyski, M.D., PhD, WHI principal investigator and associate professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, will address study participants and inform them of the latest WHI study findings. Additionally, Dr. Brzyski will thank participants for taking part in the study of women's health. Their time and effort given to the WHI has made it possible to answer health questions for postmenopausal women in the United States. Participants will also be encouraged to continue this effort with the follow-up study that will continue until the end of 2010.
The guests will enjoy entertainment and catered food. Pre-dinner entertainment will be provided by Bassam Nashawati, violinist in the San Antonio Symphony, accompanied by his sister Lama on the piano. Post-dinner entertainment will be provided by the Rick Cavender Band. The event has again been generously underwritten by the Cavender Auto Family.
San Antonio is one of 40 clinical sites for the WHI, a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) established the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) in 1991 to address the most common causes of death, disability and impaired quality of life in postmenopausal women. The WHI will continue to address cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis. The WHI is a 15-year multi-million-dollar endeavor and is one of the largest U.S. prevention studies of its kind.
The WHI was launched in 1994 in San Antonio and included a clinical trial and an observational study of generally healthy postmenopausal women. The study consists of more than 161,000 women nationally and 3,361 locally.
The clinical trails were designed to test the effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy, diet modification, and calcium and vitamin D supplements on heart disease, fractures, and breast and colorectal cancers.
The hormone trail had two studies: the estrogen-plus-progestin study of women with a uterus and the estrogen-alone study of women without a uterus. (Women with a uterus were given progestin in combination with estrogen, a practice known to prevent endometrial cancer.) In both hormone therapy studies, women were randomly assigned to either hormone medication being studied or to placebo. Those studies have now ended.
