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Collaborative Training

Applying a forward-thinking medical curriculum

WHRY leads efforts to teach how sex and gender influence health. Currently, the center is collaborating with Dr. Kelsey Martin, a practicing hematologist and oncologist and Assistant Professor at Yale School of Medicine, on integrating a focus on sex and gender into the YSM curriculum. Our goal is for instructors to teach the latest findings concerning sex and gender across the different disciplines, thus leading to better outcomes for patients.

Developing world-class experts

Former BIRCWH Scholars (from left to right): Azure Thompson, Elise DeVito, Tomoko Udo, and Megan Smith

The Yale Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Scholar Program developed research skills across health fields. Junior faculty members learned through mentoring, coaching, and team science. The National Institutes of Health funded the program. The program developed independent investigators with the skills necessary to make lasting contributions to the prevention and treatment of addictive behaviors. The scholars who have graduated from the program earned research positions supported with grant funding.

Learning from patients at Yale New Haven Hospital

Dr. Lisa Freed (left) of the Yale New Haven Hospital Women's Heart and Vascular Program

WHRY’s training program also includes collaborations that advance research in clinical settings. For example, Dr. Lisa Freed is establishing research within Yale New Haven Hospital's Women's Heart and Vascular Program. This research is developing interventions to achieve better cardiac outcomes for women. Dr. Freed has also served as a mentor in WHRY’s Undergraduate Fellowship. As a mentor, she helps to prepare the next generation of clinicians to treat patients while paying proper attention to sex and gender.

A special focus on sex and gender

WHRY also collaborated with the student editors of the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (YJBM) to publish an issue on the influence of sex and gender on health. The issue came out in June 2016 with peer-reviewed articles on smoking, stress and depression; the effect of tobacco smoking on mothers’ brains; the preference patients show for the gender of their physicians in a hospital’s Emergency Department; the effects of gender-based violence on unwanted pregnancy and abortion; the effect of marijuana on the female reproductive system; and other topics.