Jean Wactawski-Wende, PhD ’89

Jean Wactawski-Wende, PhD ’89, is nationally recognized epidemiologist who has played a leading role in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a landmark study that has changed understanding of health in postmenopausal women.

In 1993—in collaboration with Maurizio Trevisan, MD, then professor and incoming chair of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine—Wactawski-Wende wrote a grant that resulted in UB’s selection as one of the 16 vanguard centers for the WHI.

Since that time, she has served as principal investigator of the Buffalo center, principal investigator of the northeast region of WHI, national chair of the publications committee and a member of the WHI steering and executive committees.

Under her leadership, UB successfully competed for a five-year extension of the original contract in 2005.

In 2010, based on its success as a vanguard center, the university received an $8.2 million award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to administer a new round of studies that extend the WHI until 2015.

Today, UB leads the entire Northeast region.

In 1989, Wactawski-Wende became an assistant professor in the UB Department of Gynecology-Obstetrics. She later joining the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, now in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions, where she achieved the rank of full professor.

Wactawski-Wende is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Research and Scholarship, the Exceptional Scholar Sustained Achievement Award and the Outstanding Researcher of the Year Award in the School of Public Health and Health Professions.