Bernadine HealyNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH
Bernadine Healy, the first female director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), died on Saturday (August 6) from brain cancer at the age of 67, reports ScienceInsider.
Healy was a long-time proponent of women’s health. Just three weeks after accepting her appointment as NIH director under President George H. W. Bush in 1991, she launched the $625 million Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a mammoth health study of 150,000 women to investigate heart disease, breast cancer, and other diseases that are the leading cause of illness in postmenopausal women. She spoke before Congress, explaining that “we need a moon walk for women,” according to her NIH video bio. As director of the NIH, an appointment she held until 1993, she also established a policy requiring ...
