Dr. Beverly Malone Tapped to Join Advisory Committee to Harvard Nurses' Health Study III

NLN CEO's Influence Considered Key to Stepped Up Effort to Recruit Minority Nurses Participation in Third Phase of Respected Longitudinal Health-Lifestyle Study

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, NY — February 16, 2009 — Dr. Beverly Malone, CEO of the National League for Nursing, will lend her professional stature to the latest phase of the renowned Harvard Nurses Health Study, joining the initiatives select Advisory Committee by special invitation. As a champion of diversity in the nursing workforce, Dr. Malones endorsement means a great deal to the NHS III. Increasing the number of minority participants is vital to the study as it explores the impact of lifestyle choices and ethnic and cultural factors on short- and long-term risks to womens health. In the two previous phases, only a small percentage of the 200,000 nurse-participants were minorities.

The specific goal of the Phase 3 survey is to understand how diet, exercise, birth control, and pregnancy, among other lifestyle factors, during a womans 20s, 30s and 40s, her prime reproductive years, influence health throughout her life. Results are expected to have important implications for the prevention of cancer and other illnesses, as well as for the diet and lifestyle practices that can optimize womens health.

The Harvard School of Public Health, which sponsors the Nurses Health Study, invites all nurses who fall into this demographic to participate. Urging nurses to respond affirmatively and to spread the word among their colleagues, Dr. Malone stated, "It is vital, as Nurses Health Study III examines how todays environment impacts womens health, that the participants represent the diversity that nurses embody in the 21st century."

The original Harvard Nurses Health Study, which began in 1976 to study the relationship between the use of oral contraceptives and cigarette smoking and the risk of major illness, has since broadened to evaluate other lifestyle factors in womens health. The largest health survey of women ever undertaken, the initial cohort involves 127,000 nurses, aged 30 to 55, who fill out detailed questionnaires every two years. Response rates average 90 percent, and the study has so far generated more than 265 published scientific papers.

For more information on the Harvard Nurses Health Study and its contributions to public health, please visit www.channing.harvard.edu/nhs/.

For interview opportunities with Dr. Malone, please contact NLN chief communications officer, Karen R. Klestzick at 212-812-0376 or kklestzick@nln.org.

Dedicated to excellence in nursing, the National League for Nursing is the premier organization for nurse faculty and leaders in nursing education. The NLN offers faculty development, networking opportunities, testing services, nursing research grants, and public policy initiatives to its 28,000 individual and 1,200 institutional members who represent all types of nursing education programs.