Carolyn Mazure, PhD, the founding director of Women's Health Research at Yale (WHRY), recently was honored by the Women Faculty Forum (WFF).
A pioneer and a national leader in women’s health research, Mazure received the WFF's Elga R. Wasserman Courage, Clarity, and Leadership Award. Mazure is the fourth recipient of the award, which is presented annually to a faculty or staff member who has demonstrated a commitment to “building equity, diversity, and inclusion” and who has “excelled in articulating and advancing the highest aspirations” of the Yale community.
Wasserman championed women’s inclusion at Yale as a special assistant to the president under Kingman Brewster from 1969 to 1973, and worked tirelessly to ensure that female students were afforded the same opportunities as men. This year is the 100th anniversary of Wasserman’s birth, “an exciting year for Dr. Mazure to get this award,” said Nina Stachenfeld, a senior research scientist in Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and chair of the Women Faculty Forum.
Mazure, who also is the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor in Women’s Health Research, and professor of psychiatry and psychology, founded WHRY in 1998 as one of the country’s first research centers focused on women’s health. The center brings together faculty from across the disciplines to conduct wide-ranging research on women’s health and the influence of sex and gender on health outcomes.
The concept that women’s health ought to be studied separately was still a relatively new concept at the time of WHRY’s founding.
“It was Carolyn’s own blood, sweat, and tears that ended up growing that center,” said Margaret Bia, a professor emeritus of medicine (nephrology) who worked alongside Mazure at YSM advocating for gender equity in the early 2000s. “It all started with the seed of the thought that women are different than men and you can’t apply the results of studies with men to women. I think she’s contributed more than any other individual to growing the field of women’s health research.”
The center subsequently served as a model for the establishment of other women’s health research centers in the U.S., Bia noted.
Mazure’s vision, focus, and persistence have enabled her to continue expanding the center over time and to raise millions of dollars to support the center and to fund the pilot project grants, which essentially act as seed money for researchers to generate data to support larger, external grants, colleagues say. Those seed grants have proven critical to progress in women’s health research — nearly 60% of WHRY-affiliated researchers have gone on to receive National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants because of their pilot studies. The total external funding resulting from the data of these grants is more than $118 million.
The center is also known for its mentorship of students and junior faculty, a practice Mazure has also prioritized in other leadership roles.
Her leadership in the field of women’s health was recognized by the Biden administration, which last November named Mazure chair of a new White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, led by first lady Jill Biden. The initiative includes $200 million from the NIH in fiscal year 2025 to help close gaps in women’s health research.
She previously served on the advisory committee for the NIH Office for Research on Women’s Health and the planning committee for the First White House Conference on Mental Health.