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Research Agenda for Psychosocial and Behavioral Factors in Womens Health: Foreword
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This Research Agenda for
Psychosocial and Behavioral Factors in Women's Health was developed by the American
Psychological Association's Women's Health Conference Advisory Committee. Chosen
to represent the broad range of women's health concerns, the Advisory Committee
began its work months before the conference and continued for over a year after
the conference. The conference, entitled Psychosocial and Behavioral Factors
in Women's Health: Creating an Agenda for the 21st Century, was convened to
highlight the importance of psychosocial and behavioral factors in women's health,
including the extensive research implicating behavioral and psychosocial factors
in a number of major chronic diseases and conditions that influence women's
health across the life span.
Before the conference, each Advisory Committee
member prepared a list of recommendations in her/his area of expertise with
documentation of their importance for women's health. At the beginning of the
conference, the Advisory Committee met and divided into four working groups
on the basis of content areas. The Advisory Committee met for a one-day working
session immediately following the conference to discuss and refine the preconference
recommendations and the deliberations of the working groups. This process culminated
in the identification of four-draft agendas-one for each of the four working
groups: Research, Education and Training, Health Services, and Public Policy.
These four agendas were further edited and refined during the year following
the conference and combined to form the single agenda presented here. Over the
course of its deliberations, the Advisory Committee decided to focus most heavily
on the Research agenda and to provide briefer agendas on Education and Training
and Public Policy. The Health Services agenda has been omitted from this report
to allow a more complete focus on Health Services after the second conference,
to be held September 19-21, 1996.
Chairs of the working groups were Brenda DeVellis,
Ph.D., Patricia Morokoff, Ph.D., and Carolyn Mazure, Ph.D., for Research; Nancy
Russo, Ph.D., for Education and Training; Helen Coons, Ph.D., for Health Services;
and Renee Royak-Schaler, Ph.D., and Kelley Phillips, M.D., for Public Policy.
We thank the Advisory Committee
members, especially those who served as chairs and the representatives from co-sponsoring
and contributing agencies, associations and organizations. Their contributions
made this report possible. We also thank those individuals who were not on the
Advisory Committee but who helped with specific parts of the Agenda. They are
Laurence A. Bradley, Ph.D., Jody Brown, Ph.D., Laura Brown, Ph.D., Richard Gelles,
Ph.D., Vickie Mays, Ph.D., Susan Reisine, Ph.D., Ruth Striegel-Moore, Ph.D., Carol
Weisman, M.D., Terrance Wilson, Ph.D., and Gail Wyatt, Ph.D.
Sheryle J. Gallant,
Ph.D.
Gwendolyn Puryear Keita, Ph.D.
Table of Contents
Research Agenda
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