Lecture on Promoting Women's Health at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Judith K. Ockene, professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine in the Department of Medicine at UMASS Medical School, will deliver the annual Katherine A. Henry ’86 Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, April 14, at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library at Holy Cross. The lecture, titled “Promoting Women’s Health,” is free and open to the public.

Ockene is the recipient of numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and has a long history of research in the prevention of illness and disability and the promotion of health and quality of life for individuals and communities. As principal investigator of the NIH-funded Women's Health Initiative, Ockene has most recently focused her research on women's health and factors which affect morbidity, mortality, quality of life in older women, and intervention approaches for working with low-income, culturally-diverse populations.

Ockene teaches medical and public health students, residents in training, community physicians, and a variety of other healthcare providers how to help patients make lifestyle changes for the prevention and control of disease and how to adapt to illness. Her work is at the intersection of clinical medicine and public health.

She has over 150 publications in preventive and behavioral medicine and was a scientific editor of two Surgeon General's Reports on Smoking and Health. Ockene is a newly appointed member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

This lecture is part of the Katherine A. Henry ’86 Memorial Lecture Series on Women’s Health Issues. Henry’s parents endowed the lecture series in memory of their daughter who died in 1997.