As I embark as the new director of Women’s Health Research at Yale (WHRY) this July, I’d like to celebrate and thank Founding Director Carolyn M. Mazure, PhD, who leaves a tremendous legacy.
We all owe a huge amount of gratitude to Carolyn. Because of her tenacity, vision, and interdisciplinary spirit, Yale launched one of the nation’s first academic centers focused on women’s health research nearly 30 years ago. Under her leadership, more than 100 pilot studies conducted right here at Yale have deepened our understanding of sex and gender differences in a multitude of diseases that affect nearly every American – from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease to stroke and beyond. This research is the underpinning for improvements in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. And Yale is proud to continue and grow this important work!
Her legacy is not limited to research. Almost two decades ago, I had the pleasure to collaborate directly with Carolyn as part of a young team of Emergency Medicine (EM) investigators committed to introducing sex and gender medicine to our specialty. Carolyn astutely suggested an in-depth systematic review of EM literature that we ultimately published. And the results were eye-opening: a fifth of the published EM studies at the time did not even mention sex or gender of the participants and only 2% studied it as a primary outcome. Empowered with this data, we were able to successfully advocate for an NIH-sponsored national research conference on this topic with multiple stakeholders and jumpstarted a sea change of events and policies that shaped this nascent science into the fabric of EM. And we grew the next generation of researchers, educators, journal editors, and policymakers advancing women’s health.
Carolyn is a trailblazer. The causes that she has championed, advocated for, and implemented over the course of her remarkable career at Yale, in various appointment and leadership roles in our community, and of course, serving as Chair of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research will change the trajectory of our shared mission forever. Thanks to her dedication, as Carolyn becomes Professor Emeritus, Women’s Health Research at Yale is well positioned to take our shared mission to the next level – in inspiring interdisciplinary science that investigates sex-specific biology of every disease and in translating and disseminating this science back to our patients and our community, improving health for all.
It’s not up to one of us – it’s up to all of us – to change the health of our communities for the better, to improve patient care, and to advocate for policies that enhance the lives of all people. One study, one trial, one appointment at a time.
I thank Carolyn for her contributions to women’s health research and wish her the best in the next chapter of her successes.
Warm regards,
Basmah Safdar, MD
Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor in Women’s Health Research
Professor of Emergency Medicine
Director, Women’s Health Research at Yale
Director, Chest Pain Center
Vice Chair, Faculty Affairs & Development
Yale School of Medicine