The WRHR Program is funded through the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD)’s Gynecologic Health and Disease Branch and co-sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women’s Health using the NIH Mentored Research Scientist Development Program Award (K12) mechanism.
Harvard Career Development for Gynecologists and Obstetricians
The overall long-term goal of this Program is to provide an outstanding training environment for the development of Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) Physician-Scientists leaders in women’s reproductive health research and prepare them for a successful sustainable career in academic research to solve our Nation’s unmet need of scientific translation into OB-GYN practice and overcoming OB-GYN health disparities by a better understanding of biological factors driving these disparities.
The Harvard WRHR Program is based on a transdisciplinary scientific approach to understanding novel molecular, cellular and structural bases of gynecologic health, fertility preservation, and healthy pregnancy, with attention to mechanistic factors contributing to racial and ethnic disparities in reproductive outcomes including exposures to environmental toxicants, stress hormones, metabolic and microbiome disturbances. The research scope for this program encompasses only areas of OB/GYN and its related subspecialties. Primary OB-GYN preceptors/mentors and Transdisciplinary Mentors form mentoring teams addressing priority areas of research building on research faculty strengths, disease prevalence and public health impact :
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- gynecologic benign and malignant tumors (focus on uterine leiomyomas)
- maternal-fetal complications, preeclampsia, preterm birth, perinatal inflammation
- fertility preservation, infertility, and endometriosis