Published April 15, 2013 By Dr. Susan Love
With April well underway, we are proud to announce that the Health of Women (HOW) Study (www.healthofwomenstudy.org) has reached more than 40,000 participants! The Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research’s newest research initiative HOW is a unique, long-term, online study of women and men that seeks to understand what causes breast cancer and what factors contribute to long-term survivorship. Participants fill out questionnaires every few months and contribute questions they want to see asked. Since the study was launched in October 2012, we have received overwhelming response from the Love Research Army and the general public and thank all of you who have signed up already.
As we approach the six-month anniversary of HOW, we wanted to provide a quick snapshot of who makes up HOW. Thus far, we have been able to recruit people from all 50 states and Washington DC. Thanks to the reach of the Love Research Army and the online nature of the study, we also have over 800 international participants representing 67 countries.
The average age of HOW participants (to date) is 53 years, with participants as young as 18 (the minimum age limit for the study) to over age 100. While our population is mostly female, we also have a few good men as well as transgender participants in the cohort.
The HOW Study is a great vehicle to study everyone and we are striving to include as much diversity as we can. This broad scope will allow us to investigate populations that are not routinely included in research studies and to explore new topics that may lead us to possible causes worthy of further investigation.
In the coming months, we will be launching new questionnaires that focus on personal and family health history, exercise, smoking, and certain environmental factors. Once we have all the baseline information, we will launch out into even more interesting questions that have the potential to shed a light on the cause of breast cancer.
If you haven’t yet signed up for the HOW Study, act now to learn more and sign up on our website: www.healthofwomenstudy.org. If you’re already participating, encourage your family and friends to join the HOW Study. Every person who joins brings us one step closer to discovery.
