Welcoming Basmah Safdar, MD, as Director of Women’s Health Research at Yale

On July 1, Women’s Health Research at Yale welcomed the center’s second-ever director, Basmah Safdar, MD. Safdar is both a clinician and researcher: an emergency medicine physician at Yale New Haven Hospital since 2000, she is a recognized scholar in sex differences in microvascular health as well as a professor of emergency medicine.

“I have always been inspired to seek excellence, with an ambition to make things right. Growing up in a society where health care is difficult to access and where opportunities for women can be limited, I have long been driven to ensure women are seen and heard. This has only been reinforced by 25 years of administering medicine in Yale’s Emergency Department, where I have taken care of the most vulnerable members of our community,” says Safdar. "I feel fortunate to lead Women’s Health Research at Yale because its mission perfectly aligns with my lifelong ambition – to inspire research that improves the lives of women, to make them visible, and in the process improve the lives of all."

Building on the legacy of Founding Director and Yale Professor Emerita Carolyn M. Mazure, PhD, Safdar comes to Women’s Health Research at Yale with a passion for impact and an eye toward growth. She is committed to data-driven advocacy, interdisciplinary science, and collaborative excellence.

"As a clinician and researcher, Dr. Safdar has proven to be an effective cross-pollinator, connecting people and ideas to enable innovation and impact," said Nancy J. Brown, MD, Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of the Yale School of Medicine and C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine. "Through her vision and leadership, Basmah can lead Women’s Health Research at Yale to achieve new milestones in research excellence, innovation, and community engagement."

Safdar’s research and practice exposed a critical gap in sex-specific differences in emergency medicine. Her work generated a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research conference, where new standards for sex-specific research in emergency medicine were introduced and adopted.

“As an emergency physician, I kept coming across conditions where using the standard of care for every patient was just not good enough – we needed to do better. We needed to find ways to provide the right care to the right patient at the right time. Women’s health, I learned, was much more than ‘bikini medicine.’ Because every cell has a sex, we needed to push the boundaries of our knowledge beyond reproductive health to every disease – whether it was diagnosing heart disease or stroke through different tools, or treating pain, addiction, or mental health with different methods, or even understanding how common medications have different effects and side effects in men and women,” says Safdar.

Using real-life patient examples, the research conference convened a group of like-minded researchers, clinicians, educators, patients, funders, and policymakers to create a future in emergency medicine that pushed the boundaries of knowledge beyond in order to provide the best care for patients in everyday emergency medicine.

“In my new role as director of Women’s Health Research at Yale, I will bring a clinical and scientific lens to our center in order to serve as the university’s women’s health research hub – a space for interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together the best Yale clinicians and world-class scientists alongside educators, policymakers, and the community to inspire discoveries that solve the problems that our patients routinely face in their lives,” says Safdar.

As a practicing clinician, Safdar is internationally recognized for her important research identifying coronary microvascular dysfunction without obstructive coronary artery disease in the emergency department, which disproportionately affects women. This is a condition where small blood vessels supplying the heart malfunction, causing spasms and reduced blood flow to the heart. The clinical syndrome is an underrecognized form of ischemia – when restricted blood flow damages the heart due to insufficient oxygen and nutrients, often resulting in heart attacks and heart failure.

The Safdar Lab, where she serves as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on multiple clinical trials, conducts sex-specific research in microvascular health in different vascular beds – meaning a network of blood vessels – ranging from heart disease to sepsis. The research team has successfully conducted clinical trials, epidemiological studies, and translational research projects and is currently working on developing precision-based diagnostics for microvascular dysfunction.

Women’s Health Research at Yale has earned the reputation of a trailblazing academic research center focused on studying a multitude of diseases, disorders, and conditions. Safdar’s vision for the center is to grow the scope of its interdisciplinary research program through increasing the size and number of its Pilot Project Program seed awards to better serve the present needs of the community. These awards will be used to generate, translate, and disseminate innovative and relevant interdisciplinary science that improves health. With an eye toward relevance and impact, the direction of these awards will strategically align Yale’s pillars of scientific strengths and diverse funding streams with thematic areas that address diseases that are more prevalent in women, affect women differently, or are unique to women, with the goal of improving the health and well-being of everyone.

Enhancing cross-campus, multidisciplinary collaboration is another key priority for the center. Within a month of Safdar’s leadership, Women’s Health Research at Yale has teamed up with the recently established Yale Biomedical Imaging Institute to co-sponsor a $70,000 pilot award that uses imaging to focus on sex differences in diagnosis, prevention, treatment, or prognostication of a given disease. The center will continue to seek and build similar collaborations across Yale to advance its mission and expand its sex differences research in a multitude of settings.

As someone committed to building ecosystems that allow people from different backgrounds, strengths, and expertise to innovate and excel, Safdar envisions Women’s Health Research at Yale to serve as a research hub, convening Yale faculty to participate in the Women’s Health Research at Yale Collaborative. Members will join arms to move the needle and accelerate momentum in women’s health research, striving for significant and translational impact to improve the health of everyone. The Collaborative will offer curated resources to members about expertise, mentorship, sponsorship, and opportunities for sex-specific research as well as bring together colleagues from different backgrounds to learn, brainstorm, and inspire each other to improve health.

Women’s Health Research at Yale will continue to serve as a national leader in educating diverse audiences, in shaping the narrative, and in asserting a powerful voice advocating for women’s health research. Safdar sees a prime opportunity for Women’s Health Research at Yale to educate and influence beyond academia. Leveraging the rigor of the science conducted at Yale and the strengths and expertise of faculty, while also elevating patient stories to illustrate why sex differences research is important and relevant, Women’s Health Research at Yale can demystify and correct misconceptions around women’s health and translate discoveries for patients to shape both policy and public opinion.

None of this important work can be accomplished alone. Women’s Health Research at Yale has steadily relied on its longstanding partnership with Yale and its Advisory Council – leaders from the community deeply committed to the mission – over the past 25 years. Relationships continue to power progress, and Safdar has been convening stakeholders across Yale, the health system, and the New Haven community, as well as key supporters, investors, philanthropists, national and international partners, and peer organizations to identify synergies and diverse areas of opportunities. The center will seek input on creative ways to track success and impact of its program, its operational efficiencies, and dissemination metrics and plans to join efforts with peer organizations inside and outside Yale to amplify its voice and mission. These conversations will continue as Safdar continues her listening sessions to gain insight into the current strengths and areas of growth of Women’s Health Research at Yale to better serve the Collaborative, the community, and forge ahead with a shared mission to improve lives.

"I believe that this moment in time represents a pivotal inflection point in the history of women’s health. Thanks to the work led by long standing centers such as Women’s Health Research at Yale, we now have data that clearly shows the benefit of sex-specific research and its impact in improving the lives of both men and women," says Safdar.

She continues, "We need to accelerate this momentum to translate our discoveries into new precision-based tools for diagnosis and treatments, and to disseminate these findings into clinical practice so the research can reach our patients. I’m honored and inspired to lead us into the future – a future where we will change the health of our communities for the better, improve patient care, and advocate for policies that enhance the lives of all people."