WASHINGTON, DC (June 11, 2026) — Women's Health Issues, the peer-reviewed journal of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health, has issued the following call for papers:
Call for Papers: Improving the Health of Midlife and Older Women
This call for papers invites submission to Women’s Health Issues of original research that examine ways to improve the health of women aged 45 and older. There is no deadline, given the journal’s longstanding interest in women’s health across the lifespan.
Women account for a majority of the older population in the United States. In 2024, approximately 75 million women were aged 45 years or older, representing 52% of individuals in this age group. The imbalance widens with advancing age: among those 75 and older, 15 million women accounted for 57% of the population (US Census Bureau, n.d). Although women have longer life expectancies than men, they spend more of those years living with disability and frailty (Park & Ko, 2021; Phyo et al., 2024). Women and men have different patterns of chronic conditions that often arise in older adults; for instance, osteoporosis, arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease are more common in women (Alswat et al., 2017; Rubin, 2025; Segal et al., 2024). The disease burden is also growing. For instance, if current trends continue, researchers estimate that the proportion of US adult women with cardiovascular disease will increase from 10.7% in 2020 to 14.4% in 2050; they expect the proportion affected by stroke to rise from 4.1% to 6.7% (Joynt Maddox et al., 2026). Because women have a higher burden of multimorbidity (Agur et al., 2016), the shortcomings of our disease-focused and fragmented health care system disproportionately impact them relative to men.
Researchers and funders have begun addressing the gulf in knowledge regarding how diseases present in and affect women and men differently (Vyas et al., 2021), but many years and substantial investments will be necessary to achieve parity (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025). In particular, sizable evidence gaps exist in the diagnosis, prevention, and management of chronic illness and multimorbidity in women, as well as interventions to assure quality and equity of care (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2024). Women’s Health Issues is interested in papers that expand this evidence base.
Societal factors and social context shape women’s experiences of working, caregiving, and managing their own health. In the United States, a thin social safety net exacerbates burdens that often fall disproportionately on women (Calarco, 2024), while community institutions and relationships serve as key sources of support. Insufficient research, inadequate clinician training, and problematic health insurance policies mean that accurate diagnoses are delayed and effective treatments not always provided for conditions that are unique to, or that manifest differently in, women and others assigned female at birth, such as endometriosis, fibroids, perimenopause, menopause, migraines, and osteoarthritis (Barbanti & Nappi, 2025; Borah et al., 2013; Penzer & Schweikart, 2025; Rodriguez et al., 2024; Segal et al., 2024). Structural, institutional, and interpersonal racism (Jones et al., 2000) and other forms of bias mean that Black individuals, members of other racialized groups, those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and those with disabilities often face even more challenging paths to effective care for these kinds of conditions (Blanken et al., 2022; Carey et al., 2023; Evans & Jones, 2024; Hassan et al., 2023; Katon et al., 2023; Malekzadeh et al., 2025; VanderPluym et al., 2022). Marginalized women spend more time over the life course living in poverty, which makes access to high-quality health care and aging supports more difficult.
Our health system falls short in many ways in the care of older adults who are at risk for receiving fragmented care of suboptimal quality. Additionally, the pervasiveness of ageism (Henry et al., 2024) and the fact that this form of bias intersects with other forms (Crenshaw, 1991) — including bias based on sex/gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and disability (Allen et al., 2022; Farrell et al., 2023; Gendron et al., 2024; Rochon et al., 2021) — render many groups of older women at risk for adverse outcomes. Researchers, clinicians, government agencies, and community partners are using existing evidence to implement interventions to deliver coordinated person-centered care; strengthen primary care; prevent functional decline; and integrate clinical care, community and social services, and public health (Kangovi et al., 2018; Nelson et al., 2014; Shippee et al., 2019; Totten et al., 2025, 2026; Vani et al., 2026). Still, more work is needed to test innovative models and translate effective interventions into widespread practice. Advances in digital health technology are increasingly available to foster these aims. To be effective, efforts to improve care delivery and health outcomes must address the unique needs of midlife and older women and be accompanied by policy and payment mechanisms to support these goals.
Women’s Health Issues seeks original research submissions that examine ways to improve the health of women aged 45 and older. We are particularly interested in studies that involve U.S. and Canadian populations, but we are open to submissions from other countries if findings can inform research and care for women in the U.S. and Canada. We also welcome studies that include, or whose samples are entirely composed of, trans men, trans women, and/or nonbinary individuals to better understand the experiences and outcomes of people whose gender means they experience bias.
Topic areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Models of integrating clinical care, public health, and community services to improve the health of midlife and older women.
• Addressing the intersection of ageism, gender, and other sociodemographic factors in access, quality, experiences, and outcomes of care.
• Prevention and management of chronic disease, multimorbidity, and frailty to optimize the health and wellbeing of midlife and older women.
• Effective models for managing care of migraine, endometriosis, fibroids, perimenopause, menopause, and other conditions that can be affected by hormonal fluctuations and are often best treated with interdisciplinary care.
• Implementation and evaluation of innovative models of whole health and person-centered care to improve experiences and outcomes of care among midlife and older women, including approaches to strengthening primary care.
• The role of digital health solutions and artificial intelligence in improving the health and health care of midlife and older women.
• Impacts of Medicaid and Medicare policies on access, quality, safety, experience, and outcomes of care among midlife and older women.
• Ways to improve the wellbeing of midlife and older women who are caregivers, especially those caring simultaneously for young children and older family members.
There is no deadline for submissions, and manuscripts should be submitted as regular full-length articles (i.e., authors do not need to select a special section in the Editorial Manager system). Accepted articles will be published on a rolling basis. Anyone with questions should contact the Women’s Health Issues editorial office at whieditor
gwu [dot] edu.