SEX AND AGE DIFFERENCES IN IMMUNITY TO INFLUENZA (SADII) CAREER ENHANCEMENT CORE SUMMARY The SADII Career Enhancement Core (CEC) will be led by to Dr. Wendy Bennett in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Women?s Health, Sex, and Gender Research. The SADII CEC will provide integrated career enhancement opportunities to clinical, translational, and basic scientists studying sex differences within the Johns Hopkins University community. This goal will be met through the following specific aims:
Aim 1 will be to provide a broad, interdisciplinary group of established investigators and junior faculty with collaboration, networking, dissemination, and mentoring opportunities to equip them with new approaches, skills, and interdisciplinary perspectives in sex and gender differences research;
Aim 2 will be to provide pilot grant funding for early stage investigators (i.e., investigators at the level of Assistant Professor or below, with emphasis on diversity of candidates) interested in incorporating sex differences into their clinical, translational, or basic science research in the broad area of immunology (e.g., asthma and allergy, autoimmunity, cancer, infectious diseases, inflammation, microbiome, vaccines);
Aim 3 will be to integrate educational opportunities focused on teaching skills and methods for incorporating sex as a biological variable and gender considerations when planning, analyzing, and reporting data, and research dissemination activities into a broad range of existing training programs (e.g. KL2 and BIRCWH programs);
and Aim 4 will be to evaluate the effectiveness of the SADII CEC in expanding learning opportunities, dissemination of sex and gender research, mentorship, and funded research. Johns Hopkins has a strong, research-intensive environment, and has demonstrated commitment to the BIRCWH and other women?s health and sex/gender research and training opportunities. We anticipate that the SADII CEC will catalyze the expansion of research in the area of sex/gender differences in biomedical science, and support the growth of diverse investigators and leaders committed to the consideration of sex as a biologic variable in the design and conduct of their ongoing and future studies.
SADII SCORE CAREER ENHANCEMENT CORE (CEC) NARRATIVE The Sex and Age Differences in Immunity to Influenza (SADII) SCORE CEC will provide integrated career enhancement and learning opportunities to clinical, translational, and basic scientists studying sex differences within the Johns Hopkins University community. With strong institutional support and infrastructure, the SADII SCORE CEC is well positioned to leverage existing resources, including but not limited to, the Johns Hopkins Center for Women?s Health, Sex, and Gender Research, Johns Hopkins BIRCWH, and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, to support the growth, mentoring, and career opportunities for diverse researchers, to advance women?s health and sex differences research. The SADII SCORE CEC will also create new funding opportunities, in collaboration with the Foundation for Gender Specific Medicine, which has pledged matching funds to create a seed grant program to provide early stage investigators, with emphasis on diversity of candidates, with a novel opportunity to incorporate sex as a biological variable into their clinical, translational, or basic science research in the broad area of immunology (e.g., asthma and allergy, autoimmunity, cancer, infectious diseases, inflammation, immunodeficiencies, microbiome, vaccines).
