SWAN: A Multicenter, Multiethnic, Community-Based Cohort Study of Women and the Menopausal Transition

Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) is the first national study to describe women at midlife, an understudied age group. Its multidisciplinary approach provides the opportunity to consider the contributions of both culture and biology so that one may better understand health of women. The SWAN employs a prospective design that includes sufficient pre- and postmenopausal observations to ensure the separation of menopause-related and age-related physiological changes. Other attributes include the comprehensive standardized data collection related to biological, behavioral, physiological, social, environmental, and cultural factors; specialized data collection methodologies suitable to address the monthly and yearly variation in behavioral and biological patterns; general ability to community-dwelling populations recruited from major United States population centers; sufficiently large sample size and numbers of data points to ensure reliable estimates of associations and relevant effect sizes; and inclusion of sufficient numbers of racial/ethnic minorities to provide comparative information with the non-Hispanic Caucasian population. Because of these attributes, SWAN can contribute new and substantive knowledge about women's health in general and the menopause transition in particular.