The current application represents a coalescence of longstanding interests in women's health related issues at SUNY Downstate around mentoring young scientists to pursue research in this area. This application is fueled by two predominant considerations. Understanding gender-related differences on multiple biological levels makes possible the development of therapies that are optimal for both males and females. Moreover, the BIRCWH program represents an endeavor that would in fact accelerate current attempts to elevate our clinical research enterprise to that of the basic sciences. The participants are acutely aware that persisting disparities of women in science and medicine and the enduring reluctance to consider sex/gender when formulating treatment regimens are to a large extent inextricably interwoven. Thus, we fully endorse the imperative to foster the ability of women and ethnic minority scientists to successfully compete for research dollars and thus contribute their perspectives to evolving medical consensus. This will be pursued by an aggressive recruitment outreach and by collaboration with two minority non-research intensive institutions, Kings County Hospital and the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Development, both of which are located on our greater campus. Integration of their perspectives with the training milieu of the BIRCWH mentoring program should greatly broaden the field of training. Such collaboration will also enlarge the scope and context of our mentoring and enhance our ability to more fully incorporate the extraordinarily rich racial and ethnic diversity of our surrounding neighborhood into our educational and research initiatives. An exemplar of this is the research mentoring area ' Health Care Disparities and Well-being in Women'. Strong institutional support has enabled additional mentored research areas to include Pain and Analgesic Response, Early Detection of Breast Cancer, Neurological Disorders, Diabetes and Progression of AIDS. The participating mentoring laboratories constitute varied methodological expertise (biochemistry/molecular biology, electrophysiology, imaging) that transcend the boundaries of their associated disease-focused groups adding to our multidisciplinary approach. Our mentoring program is structured to maximize interaction among all participants. This should greatly enrich scholar training by diminishing artificial barriers that are often erroneously inferred from differing methodologies.
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