The following paragraph describing the Penn State Center for Women’s Health Research may be used in grant submissions to help document institutional resources for women’s health research at Penn State:
The Penn State Center for Women’s Health Research promotes research on women’s health and on sex/gender differences related to biology, health, and disease by providing access to a network of faculty members interested in women’s health and information about active projects and datasets; promoting mentoring opportunities for junior faculty members; nurturing the development of interdisciplinary research teams; and supporting the preparation of grant applications. Founded in 2004 as the Central Pennsylvania Center of Excellence for Research on Pregnancy Outcomes with a $4.7 million grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Center was renamed in 2011 to reflect a growing research enterprise and broader research focus on women’s health topics across the lifespan. The Center is administratively based in the Department of Public Health Sciences in the College of Medicine and has affiliated faculty from multiple departments and colleges at Penn State. Affiliated faculty include the Penn State BIRCWH (Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health) Scholars supported by a NIH K12 award. Activities of the Center include an annual Women’s Health Research Day, invited seminar speakers, support for research teams developing grant proposals, and maintaining a Center website to showcase women’s health research at Penn State and help investigators identify potential collaborators and mentors. Examples of current projects by Center investigators are: the Central Pennsylvania Women’s Health Study, which is refining an evidence-based behavior change intervention for pre- and interconceptional women to include Smartphone applications; the Rural Women’s Healthcare Project, which is developing a network of rural primary care practices that provide preventive services to women; Gender Differences in Cancer Risk and Response to Cancer Therapy, which investigates variants in UGT genes and risk for lung cancer; the First Baby Study, which is following a cohort of firsttime mothers to understand the impact of mode of delivery on subsequent childbearing; and several projects focusing on weight management and obesity prevention in women at different life stages.
For more information see links on our homepage.
For further information about the Center as a resource or for updates on the information provided in this paragraph, please contact Shirl Blouch.