Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 19, 2003|Volume 32, Number 3



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Carolyn Mazure, director of Women's Health Research at Yale



Aim is to support work with
'practical benefits,' says director

Women's Health Research at Yale (WHR) was established five years ago to foster cutting-edge investigations in women's health leading to direct practical benefit and to provide educational outreach regarding new research findings.

Since its inception, the program has funded over 40 studies on women's health and sex-specific factors affecting health and disease. It has also assisted Yale investigators in generating over $15 million of additional funds to pursue their research. In addition, WHR has a growing community outreach initiative.

The program is directed by Carolyn Mazure, a professor of psychiatry with a doctoral degree in psychology, who also serves as associate dean for faculty affairs at the School of Medicine.

Women's Health Research at Yale will celebrate its five-year anniversary on Monday, Sept. 29, at an event titled "From Vision to Innovation." (See related story.)

Mazure met with the Yale Bulletin & Calendar recently to reflect on the past five years and discuss the program's plans for the future. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.


Why was the Women's Health Research at Yale program started and what were some of the main goals?

We began the program for the explicit purpose of supporting and nurturing research that focused on the health of women and on sex-specific aspects of health and disease. The rationale was based on the fact that for many years, women were not included as participants in clinical research and, even when women were included, sex differences in outcomes were not examined. There was a lack of knowledge about whether study results would be the same had they been performed with women in mind.

One of our main goals is to encourage researchers to consider sex and gender as variables of study in their work. We also help to bring researchers together from many different fields in order to answer the complicated questions only collaborative interdisciplinary studies can address. In addition, the program encourages researchers to look at the diversity of individuals in the health care population. The differences that exist among us may be very important in predicting health outcome.

One of the component parts that comprise Women's Health Research at Yale is the Ethel F. Donaghue Women's Health Investigator Program, which is our grant-making or funding arm. Requests for new research ideas -- through letters of intent -- are sent yearly to the Yale community so that full-time faculty can apply for funding. We follow a process of review for letters of intent, and subsequent full applications, very similar to that used by NIH [National Institutes of Health] to select studies for funding.


How many studies have you funded since the program began in 1998 and what impact do you think they might have in the future?

We try to fund as many grants as possible each year, and the competition sometimes is quite tough. Over the last five years, we've been able to fund over 40 Yale investigators with over $3 million that was originally provided in a grant to us by The Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Foundation. Investigators have been able to conduct pilot studies on topics that might have not been studied otherwise. With these pilot grants, the researchers have been able to generate additional outside grants to maintain their programs of research.

At this time, over $15 million dollars of funds have been awarded to Yale researchers based on the findings generated by the program's support. The results of studies such as these have already begun to inform personal and professional practice, and we expect that the translation of results will only increase.


How have you involved the community in the program?

We have formed a community-based council that has been very helpful in defining our goals and implementing our outreach efforts. Specifically, we want the research work that we support and initiate to have a practical benefit, and one way we aim to achieve this benefit is through various community interactions.

We are committed to translating research findings so that new data are accessible to people from the New Haven-area community and beyond. We want the community to understand both how research works and how findings might affect them. To achieve this, we provide community education workshops, and publish a quarterly newsletter that features our research. We also hold major conferences every other year. All of our initiatives are featured on our web site: www.yalewhr.org. The site also offers information on ongoing clinical trials in which community members can participate.


What made you decide to take on the task of leading Women's Health Research at Yale?

As a researcher, I have always had an interest in how the causes of illness and treatments differ for women and men. In my own area of research, depression, the study of sex differences has only begun systematically in recent years, yet we now know there are important differences in the risk factors for depression and, potentially, in the outcomes of our treatments.

As the study of sex differences has begun in other disciplines, such as cardiology, we have seen similar strides in knowledge. This, coupled with the continuing need to learn more about disorders that are unique to women or highly prevalent in women, such as ovarian cancer or immune disorders, highlights the need to study women and sex differences in health and disease. Women's Health Research at Yale provides a mechanism for ensuring that we continue this effort.

Even if we are fortunate enough in the foreseeable future to develop cures for some of the disorders that afflict us, there will always be a need to investigate how sex and gender affect risk factors for disease, how treatment must be shaped to accommodate our differences, and how prevention strategies can be tailored to be most effective for women and men.


How has your position as associate dean enhanced your role as director of Women's Health Research at Yale?

In many ways, my new position has been very helpful to the goals of Women's Health Research at Yale. We have an outstanding faculty at the School of Medicine who conduct research that will change our lives. My position as associate dean puts me in even closer contact with the faculty and gives me fresh insights into the ongoing research that has potential benefits for women.


What are some of the goals for the future of Women's Health Research at Yale?

There is an increasingly clear recognition that research needs to study the effects of sex, rather than controlling for, or holding constant, the effects of sex. My hope for the program is that it will continue to flourish. We are now building a structure on which we can leverage our resources and continue to grow. We have been writing our own grants in an attempt to replenish our resources and expand the important work that needs to be done. One such grant is the Building Interdisciplinary Careers in Women's Health Training Grant. This NIH grant has allowed us to support young researchers who want to study women and drug abuse specifically. This area was identified as one that has been dramatically understudied. We also have collaborations with various research centers here at Yale including the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center and the Specialized Center of Research studying women and cocaine abuse.

For additional information about the Women's Health Research at Yale program, or the "From Vision to Innovation" event on Sept. 29, call (203) 764-6600, or visit the website at www.yalewhr.org.

-- By Karen Peart


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