Women's Health Research at Yale

Results: Impact Statement Women’s Health Research at Yale Generates innovative interdisciplinary research findings on gender differences in health and disease through our Pilot Project Program. Has awarded more than $4.5 million in “seed” money to fund nearly 70 pilot studies in areas of women’s health that had previously received little attention, and the results of these projects have generated over $52 million in new external grants for further research - an enormous “return on investment.” An outstanding 54 percent of the investigators who received pilot funds used their pilot data to obtain new external funding to pursue important new areas of research on women’s health. Four-fifths of the funded researchers have been junior or mid-level faculty who needed initial funding to launch their innovative research.

Geographic areas served: Women’s Health Research at Yale supports investigations that use a variety of basic science and clinical research approaches to address critical questions in women’s health. We encourage research that examines the effects of socio-demographic factors (socioeconomic status, ethnicity, etc) on health outcome. Our educational outreach serves the Greater New Haven area, Connecticut and the Nation.

Programs: Advancing Health Equity for Women Sex and gender are among the most important variables in understanding health. Yet the National Institutes of Health, the largest source of biomedical research funding, did not require scientists to consider including women as participants in clinical research until the mid-1990s. When women were included as subjects in research studies, outcomes were not analyzed by gender. Our program was founded in 1998 to address these disparities and begin to close the knowledge gap created by the historical non-inclusion of women in clinical research. All our efforts are aimed at providing practical benefits to improve the health of women. Our interdisciplinary program: Funds pilot studies to generate previously unavailable feasibility data, enabling our researchers to obtain larger external grants and continue their work. Develops our own research projects, continually pursuing grants and conducting studies. Informs the community about our scientific findings. Trains the next generation of women’s health researchers.