Both reported short sleep and reported long sleep are major predictors of excess mortality risk, but the importance of reported sleep duration as a risk factor is not yet known. Sleep-related risks are of special interest to The Women's Health Initiative (WHI), because insomnia increases among women at menopause, and because WHI's hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and dietary modification (DM) may influence sleep. The WHI is an exciting opportunity to examine whether risks associated with reported sleep durations can be explained by a selection of intercurrent conditions, but the broad WHI design does not control for important potential confounders. Explicitly, the broad WHI design by itself cannot determine if behaviorally-modifiable objective sleep durations are the primary risk factor.