Read more about the HHS offices and agencies included in this section.
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Health and Wellness
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Reproductive Health
- Breastfeeding
- Menopause
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- Ovulation Calculator
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- Patient Materials
- Increase in breastfeeding
- Increasing women's lifespan
- Policy of inclusion of women in clinical trials
- Improvements in breast cancer screening
- Improvements in mental health care for women
- Decrease in breast cancer deaths
- Decrease in smoking rates for women
- Decrease in teen pregnancy
- Cervical cancer prevention and screening
- Decrease in HIV/AIDS deaths in women
- Federal funding to address violence against women
- Decrease in lung cancer deaths in women
- Mother-to-child transmission of HIV decreased
- Decrease in deaths from women's leading killer – heart disease
- Making birth control better, safer, and more accessible for women
- Creation of Offices on Women's Health at the federal level
- Cancer and Steroid Hormone (CASH) study
- Approval of emergency contraception
- Building better osteoporosis treatments
- Efforts to improve pregnant women's health and outcomes
- Dangerous drugs and devices for women removed from market
- Improvements in support to caregivers
- Improvements in older women's health
- Largest women's health prevention study ever – Women's Health Initiative
- FDA helps women and families meet their nutritional needs
- Addressing sex differences in health
- Addressing minority women's health
- Recognizing the needs of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women
- Creation of women's health information resources
- Affordable Care Act improves women's health
- 30 Achievements in Women's Health in 30 Years (1984 – 2014)
- HHS and women's health: Agency and office descriptions
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- 30 Achievements in Women's Health in 30 Years (1984 – 2014)
- Building better osteoporosis treatments
- NIH, NIAMS, What Is Osteoporosis? Fast Facts: An Easy-to-Read Series of Publications for the Public
- MedlinePlus, Osteoporosis - overview
- AHRQ, Treatment To Prevent Fractures in Men and Women With Low Bone Density or Osteoporosis: Update of a 2007 Report
- OSG, Bone Health and Osteoporosis: A Report of the Surgeon General
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30 Achievements in Women's Health in 30 Years (1984 – 2014)
Call the OWH HELPLINE: 1-800-994-9662
9 a.m. — 6 p.m. ET, Monday — Friday
OWH and the OWH helpline do not see patients and are unable to: diagnose your medical condition; provide treatment; prescribe medication; or refer you to specialists. The OWH helpline is a resource line. The OWH helpline does not provide medical advice.
Please call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room if you are experiencing a medical emergency.Building better osteoporosis treatments
Osteoporosis is a disease that weakens bones, causing them to become fragile and break more easily. Osteoporosis can occur in both men and women and at any age, but it is most common in older women. Women lose bone mass at a faster rate after menopause, when the body stops making the hormone estrogen.1 Osteoporosis causes half of all women over age 50 to break a bone in their lifetime.2
In 1984, the FDA released an updated guidance document on the treatment of osteoporosis. Since that time, the FDA has approved several different types of osteoporosis treatment and prevention medications: bisphosphonates (medicines that slow bone loss), peptide hormones (hormones made by the thyroid gland), estrogen (in the form of menopausal hormone therapy) for postmenopausal women, and selective estrogen receptor modulators (raloxifene for postmenopausal women).3
In 1994, NIH’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases began the Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases National Resource Center to increase awareness, knowledge, and understanding of osteoporosis and other bone diseases. The Center focused efforts on targeting minority women and provided publications for various populations. The 2004 first-ever Surgeon General’s report on bone health and osteoporosis showed the large burden that bone disease places on older women.4
The 2010 Affordable Care Act requires most insurers to cover osteoporosis screening at no cost for women over 60 who are at increased risk for the disease.
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Read more about the HHS offices and agencies included in this section.
All material contained on these pages are free of copyright restrictions and may be copied, reproduced, or duplicated without permission of the Office on Women’s Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Citation of the source is appreciated.
Page last updated: April 01, 2019.
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A federal government website managed by the Office on Women's Health in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
200 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC 20201
1-800-994-9662 • Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET (closed on federal holidays).
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