Jennifer Wider, MD

“Got milk?” Most women in the United States understood the message of the widespread and successful advertising campaign imploring them to increase calcium in their diets. But the message should have posed an additional question, “Got Vitamin D, too?”

Five years ago this summer the National Institutes of Health’s stopped early a major portion of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a large and ambitious study to address the most common causes of death, disability and impaired quality of life in postmenopausal women.

At 30,000 feet, breast cancer awareness is probably not the first thing on an airline passenger’s mind. But Delta Airlines is trying to change all that. Delta’s “Force for Global Good” is offering $2 glasses of pink lemonade to customers and donating all proceeds to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF).

If you’re having sex, pay close attention. Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are on the rise in this country and it seems that people aren’t protecting themselves properly.

Osteoporosis, a disease that weakens the bones and makes them more likely to break, affects millions and millions of Americans each year. It affects women much more often than men and is more common in older people.

Only one in five women between the ages of 18 and 44 know their cholesterol level, despite the fact that cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease, the number one killer of women in the United States.

As a group, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than nineteen million Americans face anxiety disorders each year. And women are more vulnerable to most types of anxiety disorders than men.