Women's Healthy Ageing Project

Women's Healthy Ageing Project
Type of projectMedical research
LocationAustralia
OwnerUniversity of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences & Centre for Neuroscience at the Royal Melbourne Hospital
Key peopleProfessor Cassandra Szoeke, Director & Principal Investigator

Professor Lorraine Dennerstein, Chair Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Philippe Lehert, Lead Statistician

Professor John Hopper (scientist), Chair Scientific Advisory Board
Established1990

The Women's Healthy Ageing Project (WHAP) is the longest ongoing medical research project examining the health of Australian women.[1] Its landmark studies concern women's heart and brain health, a long-neglected area of specialised research.[1]

It began in 1990 as a longitudinal study of more than 400 Australian-born women and has been recording health changes for 30 years, from midlife to later-life.[2]

The study is run within the Healthy Ageing Program, a research group at the University of Melbourne School of Medicine, in collaboration with the Centre for Medical Research at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.[3]

The Healthy Ageing Program consists of WHAP (1990); the WHAP Generations Study (2021), involving children of the original 1990 WHAP participants; and AgeHAPPY (Healthy Ageing Project Population Youth-Senior) (2018), an online health survey of more than 5,000 participants assessing the impact of lifestyle factors on health and ageing.[4]

  1. ^ a b "'I would watch every episode': charting the 30-year study into Australian women's ageing". The Guardian. 2021-09-25. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  2. ^ "What we've learned about women's health over 30 years". ABC Radio National. 2021-08-31. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  3. ^ "Cognition- Impact of Ageing and Menopause – AMS". Retrieved 2022-05-02.
  4. ^ Cigognini, Brendan (2021-07-26). "AgeHAPPY: Healthy Ageing Project Population Youth-senior". Melbourne Medical School. Retrieved 2022-02-10.