Scientific Abstract: The primary goal of the University of Maryland's proposed BIRCWH IV Program is to continue our already highly successful program that was designed to foster interdisciplinary research in women's health among junior faculty Scholars working together with a team of senior faculty mentors to bridge the gap between specialized training and independent research careers. To achieve this goal, we have refined and adapted our current program to provide Scholars with in-depth career development training in three focused and interactive research theme areas: 1) Women's Health and the Brain;2) The Aging Woman;and 3) Conditions Specific to Women. These theme areas build on existing strengths in research at UMB and are fertile ground for interdisciplinary basic science, translational, behavioral, clinical, epidemiological, and/or health services research. They are an extension of the theme areas offered in our current program allowing many of those mentors from the current program to participate and to allowing former Scholars opportunities to serve on mentor teams as coaches providing a support network for new Scholars. The excellence of our mentors reflects the enormous growth and diversity in research activity on the UMB campus, with a significant amount of that growth in research relevant to women's health. We plan to redouble our efforts to recruit Scholars from underrepresented minority groups. Although we were successful in recruiting two minority candidates to our current program, our goal is to double that number by enhancing our efforts in recruiting from external sources, including historically black institutions. We propose to expand our Research Resource Laboratory by providing access to an enhanced array of shared core resources, including biostatistics, bioinformatics, seminars on grant writing and manuscript preparation, staff to assist with research projects, and shared equipment and office space, as part of institutional support. An important strength of our BIRCWH Program is that Scholars are able to draw from a multidisciplinary pool of senior faculty mentors for their mentor teams, but also to engage in research that is truly interdisciplinary. For example, a Scholar could access expertise in genetics, epidemiology and neurology to conduct clinical research on central nervous system contributions to the menopausal transition. Our former and current Scholars all have benefited immensely from our rich research environment and frequently cite the interdisciplinary nature of their training experience as an extraordinary advantage to their research. Lay Abstract: The ultimate goal of this career development program for junior faculty members in women's health research is to enlarge and enrich the pool of scientists working to improve the health of women. Through a program of individualized mentoring by a team of senior researchers with expertise from several disciplines, the Scholars selected for the BIRCWH program will develop their own independent research careers, and will eventually train vet a new generation of scientists in women's health
Showing the most recent 10 out of 107 publications
