From left, ALSWH directors Professor Gita Mishra and Professor Deb Loxton, and Department of Health Disability & Aging Assistant Secretary Rhiannon Box. | Photo courtesy of The University of Queensland
What you probably already know: Australia’s longest-running women’s health study has just hit 30 years. When the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) was launched in 1996 “high-quality data was scarce,” says The University of Queensland Australia, which collaborates on the study with the University of Newcastle (UON). It now tracks more than 57,000 women across all parts of the country, and data has been collected from four generations of women. The study has produced several key findings, including the effect of endometriosis and the mental and psychological impact of domestic violence over an entire lifetime. It has been cited in more than 1,200 scientific publications.
Why it matters: “What makes this study so special is we have followed women from their first period to menopause,” says University of Queensland Professor Gita Mishra, who has been involved since the beginning, “giving us the ability to see how early life reproductive events influence health in midlife and beyond, and confirmed those patterns in women around the world." The first women studied were born in 1921, and the study has expanded to include the children of those born between 1989 and 1995 so researchers can link children’s health to their mothers. The study has also begun to recruit women from some Asian countries.
What it means: The impact on common health problems including obesity, reproduction and, notably, domestic violence and endometriosis, has been profound. Mishra notes that, back in 2000 when researchers began studying endometriosis, it was little understood and underresearched but has become “a hot topic in recent years.” Three years ago, ALSWH determined that one in seven Australian women were diagnosed with the condition, significantly higher than previously reported. “If we hadn’t asked these questions all those years ago,” she says, “we wouldn’t have the incredible resource of data we have today to answer questions of interest to the public and medical community.”
What happens next: In 2025, University of Newcastle Professor Deborah Loxton, the center’s UON director, was the first to show that domestic violence can create mental and physical health issues that last for decades. Last year, new data revealed that women who had experienced domestic violence were more likely to have at least two chronic health conditions. “There aren’t many longitudinal studies in the world with more than four generations involved, and very few that have 135 people over the age of 100 still filling in surveys,” she says. “We are now at a point where it’s unusual for women’s health to be viewed as solely involving reproductive health. A lot has changed since the 1990s, but there is always more research to be done.”
