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BUILDING INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CAREERS
IN WOMEN’S HEALTH (BIRCWH 2005)
Program Descriptions and Contact Information
The Office of Research on Women’s Health, along with nine NIH Institutes and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, supports eleven new programs, listed below, for developing faculty Scholars in interdisciplinary women’s health research. Sites recruit their own Scholars. For specific information, contact the Program Director listed.
California | Kansas | Kentucky | Massachusetts | Michigan
Missouri | North Carolina | Ohio | Texas
California
University of California, Davis
Principal Investigator: Claire Pomeroy, M.D.
Email Address: cpomeroy@ucdavis.edu
Research Careers in Women's Health" (BIRCWH) Program is to provide
junior faculty with state-of-the-art multidisciplinary training that
will ensure their establishment of independent biomedical research
careers in areas relevant to women's health. A second objective of this
program is to create an environment that nurtures non-traditional
cross-disciplinary collaborations in focused and interactive research
areas essential to improving the health of women.
The UC Davis BIRCWH Program will focus on four interacting areas: (1)
neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases and their disproportionate
impact on females, (2) metabolic and nutrition-related syndromes and
their repercussions on women, (3) cardiovascular science and its
relationship to gender, and (4) lifespan biology and transitions, such
as early development, adolescence, and menopause, that bring unique
risks to females.
University of California, Los Angeles
Principal Investigator: Gautam Chaudhuri, M.D., Ph.D.
Email Address: gchaudhuri@mednet.ucla.edu
The overall theme of the BIRCWH Center has been to emphasize a
fundamental approach to the diseases of women that include the
disciplines of developmental biology, molecular genetics and cell
biology, behavioral science, cardiovascular science, acquired immune
deficiency disease, aging and its problems as it affects women, as well
as translational and clinical investigative research. All of the
proposed faculty mentors will be able to provide training to allow the
BIRCWH Scholars to establish their own independent, fundable research
programs applicable to the clinical problems of women.
University of California, San Francisco
Principal Investigator: Ruth Greenblatt, M.D.
Email Address: ruth.greenblatt@ucsf.edu
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Kaiser
Permanente of Northern California (Kaiser) Division of Research (DOR)
are collaborating to provide career development training and support for
young investigators who are interested in issues in women's health. We
have organized our strengths in women's health into 10 Multidisciplinary
Research Teams (breast cancer; cardiovascular disease; complementary and
alternative medicine; dementia and cognitive dysfunction; HIV in women;
menopause and hormone therapy; obesity; osteoporosis and osteoarthritis;
screening for disease and urinary incontinence).
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Kansas
University of Kansas Medical Center
Principal Investigator: Patricia A Thomas, M.D.
Email Address: pthomas@kumc.edu
The long-term career objective of the KUMC BIRCWH K12 Program is to
foster the career development of junior faculty pursuing basic,
translational, behavioral, clinical and/or health services research
relevant to women's health. Over the five-year project period, the
number of junior level (assistant professor) faculty hired in
tenure-track positions pursuing women's health research will increase by
at least eight. A flexible faculty development plan tailored to meet the
needs of each newly recruited faculty member will be provided. Mentors
have been enlisted in five thematic areas related to women's health: (i)
Women's Reproductive Health; (ii) Maternal Health; (iii) Pathogenesis of
Diseases Prevalent in Women; (iv) Drug Design, Drug Delivery, and
Pharmacogenomics; and (v) Prevention, Intervention, and Health
Disparities.
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Kentucky
University of Kentucky Medical Center
Principal Investigator: James E. Ferguson, II M.D.
Email Address: jef@uky.edu
The primary goal of the proposed BIRCWH Program is to continue to
provide Interdisciplinary Women's Health Research (IWHR) scholars with
state-of-the-art multidisciplinary training in women's health research
that will ensure that they successfully establish independent research
careers in academic medicine. To achieve this goal, we have refined and
adapted our already successful organizational structure to provide
scholars with in-depth training in 4 focused and interacting areas of
women's health: 1) drug abuse and its relationship to sex and gender
differences, 2) cancer as it relates to women's health, 3) hormonal
regulation across a woman's lifespan, and 4) oral health and its impact
on cardiovascular and endocrine health and pregnancy outcomes.
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Massachusetts
Harvard University
Principal Investigator: Jill M. Goldstein, Ph.D.
Email Address: jill_goldstein@hms. Harvard.edu
The mission of this BIRCWH program is to develop the next generation of
scientists and scientist-clinicians as leaders in the field of women's
health who will contribute to understanding sex-specific vulnerabilities
to major medical and psychiatric disorders and disorders specific to
women. The training will be based on a translational approach to
understanding sex-specific vulnerabilities and disorders specific to
women. The program will be modeled in the context of a lifespan
perspective to identify etiologic mechanisms during fetal development,
puberty, adulthood, and aging, with some focus on periods specific to
women such as child-bearing, perimenopause and menopause.
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Michigan
University of Michigan
Principal Investigator: Timothy R.B. Johnson, M.D.
Email Address: trbj @ med.umich.edu
The goal of the Michigan BIRCWH is to develop a cadre of new junior
faculty scholars through a mentored scholarly research experience
leading to independent scientific careers addressing interdisciplinary
women's health concerns. Each scholar will have an assigned mentor: an
established, independent investigator with a proven track record who has
been selected for his/her commitment and track record support for junior
colleagues in their development to independence. We will target scholars
for areas of special interest in: (1) pelvic floor/urogynecology
research; (2) health services research; (3) reproductive science and
women's medicine; and, (4) biobehavioral and aging research
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Missouri
Washington University
Principal Investigator: Clay F. Semenkovich, M.D.
Email Address: csemenko@im.wustl.edu
The long-term objective of this application supporting the Building
Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) Program at
Washington University is to produce independent investigators conducting
interdisciplinary research in women's health. The application has a
single specific aim: To identify outstanding young scientists committed
to women's health who have completed fellowship training, match them
with mentors working in an environment that promotes interdisciplinary
research, and provide them with career development experiences leading
to their independence. By bridging fellowship training and independent
faculty status, the BIRCWH program has the potential to significantly
impact women's health by increasing the number of outstanding scientists
utilizing novel and cooperative approaches to address problems that
include depression, osteoporosis, lupus, type 2 diabetes, urinary tract
infections, heart attacks, certain cancers, and infertility.
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North Carolina
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Principal Investigator: Eugene P. Orringer, M.D.
Email Address: epo@med.unc.edu
The goal of the UNC BIRCWH is to select, train, and mentor junior
faculty members as they transition to research independence. The UNC
BIRCWH career development program is centered around three general
research themes: Biomarkers to Therapeutics; Prevention and
Intervention; and Health Issues of the Mature Woman. Each of these
themes is: very much relevant to women's health; well-suited to
interdisciplinary collaboration; and an area of considerable strength
here at UNC.
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Ohio
University of Cincinnati
Principal Investigator: Arthur T. Evans, M.D.
Email Address: arthur.evans@uc.edu
The goal of this program is to establish an Interdisciplinary Research
Careers in Women's Health Scholars Program that will identify and train
junior faculty members at the College of Medicine at the University of
Cincinnati and Children's Hospital Medical Center in the area of Women's
Health Research. This program will be based in the Department of
Obstetrics and Gynecology but includes mentors from eight different
academic departments of the Medical School (Cell Biology, Environmental
Health, Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Molecular Genetics, Pathology
and Laboratory Medicine, Pharmacology and Cell Biology, and the College
of Pharmacy) and four divisions of the Department of Pediatrics
(Developmental Biology, Endocrinology, Pulmonary Biology and
Neonatology).
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Texas
University of Texas Medical Branch
Principal Investigator: Abbey B. Berenson, M.D.
Email Address: abberens@utmb.edu
The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) proposes to develop a
BIRCWH program to train successful, independent investigators in women's
health. The Program will focus on six areas of strength in women's
health research on the UTMB campus: Minority Health & Health
Disparities, Geriatrics, Endocrinology, Infectious Disease & Immunology,
Addiction, and Adolescent Health. The program will place special
emphasis on the health needs of poor and ethnically diverse women.
