Party to Thank WNY Women for Participating in Landmark Study

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Western New York women who took part in the landmark 12-year Women's Health Initiative will be celebrated in a "WHI Participant Recognition Day" on Saturday, Sept. 30, from 10 a.m. to noon in front of Farber Hall on the UB South (Main Street) Campus.

Five-hundred-fifty of the nearly 4,000 participants from Western New York are expected to attend.

The festivities will include dedication of a pear tree planted at UB in honor of the contributions of participants to women's health and of a life-sized buffalo adorned with the pictures of the faces of participants

David L. Dunn, M.D., Ph.D., UB vice president for health sciences, will present comments, along with Maurizio Trevisan, M.D., dean of the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions, and Jean Wactawski-Wende, Ph.D., associate professor of social and preventive medicine and gynecology-obstetrics, who are co-directors of the UB WHI studies.

A video produced by the National Institutes of Health as a tribute to participants also will be shown.

The WHI, which involved 163,000 women nationally between the ages of 50 and 79, changed the face of women's health. The $625-million initiative remains the largest clinical trial ever undertaken in the U.S.

The most significant outcome of the initiative came from trials of hormone therapy, which showed that estrogen-plus-progestin increased the risk of heart disease, stroke, and blood clots in post-menopausal women, outweighing its protective effect on bone health. These findings contradicted the accepted wisdom at the time.