News Archive

September 7, 2016

On August 31st, 2016, Northwestern University welcomed NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) to campus for a discussion of biomedical research funding in the United States. At a press conference following the discussion, Director Collins addressed an issue central to the Women’s Health Research Institute – the inclusion of women in biomedical research.

“The percent of participants in clinical trials across the board at NIH is about 54 percent women,” he said. “That’s very different than it was 30 years ago.”

Collins also addressed the “Consideration of Sex as a Biological Variable,” policy set for by the NIH in January of 2015 stating, “…We’ve also made a requirement on researchers who were studying animal models of human disease. They have to study males and females, which often times was not done in the past.”

August 22, 2016

Members of the WHRI Leadership council have been longstanding champions for the consideration of sex within biomedical and clinical research studies. Recently, a new study conducted by members of the WHRI Leadership and colleagues, was published in the journal JAMA Surgery [1]. The authors analyzed over 1,600 surgical-based research studies and found that sex biases exist in the reporting and analysis of data.

Study author Dr. Melina Kibbe, Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina, and former WHRI Leadership Council member, shares her thoughts on the results, “While I was happy to see that both sexes are being included in surgical research, I was surprised to see that only a third of the manuscripts presented sex-based results.”

April 18, 2016

Northwestern University has established a Master of Science in Reproductive Science and Medicine. The 18-month, full-time degree program will provide training in reproductive science focusing on mammalian reproductive biology and medicine with an emphasis on applications to human health.

February 18, 2016

BY  ON FEB 17, 2016

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine News Center

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky joined the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI) in celebrating recently announced National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration policies to include women in basic science and clinical research studies.

January 4, 2016
Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune

Before a drug or treatment hits the market, it has to be extensively tested. Usually, the test subjects include laboratory animals — mice, rats, pigs. For decades, those critters shared one trait: They were predominantly male. Scientists seeking breakthroughs experimented almost exclusively on male animals. (We'll get to human test subjects in a moment.)

Researchers shunned female animals because they feared the animals' reproductive cycles or hormonal changes could skew the results. Even for diseases prevalent in women, researchers used predominantly male animals in their studies.

November 19, 2015

Dr. Paula Stern is honored with the Louis V. Avioli Founders Award

Baltimore, MD— The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) has announced the 2015 Esteemed Awards Recipients. Each year, the ASBMR recognizes its members’ accomplishments with eight esteemed awards. This year’s winner of the Louis V. Avioli Founders Award is Dr. Paula Stern of Northwestern University. This award honors an ASBMR member for his or her fundamental contributions to bone and mineral basic research. 

November 18, 2015

Source: Throb

By: Diane Kelly

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that high school sex education in the United States is an unholy mess. And as a result, an alarming number of students enter college with little knowledge about how their bodies work in terms of reproductive health.

A team of Northwestern University professors led by Teresa Woodruff is addressing the problem with a MOOC. The four-week course, Introduction to Reproduction, went live earlier this semester. It won’t teach you new sexual positions or how to manage intimate relationships, but it will provide a basic background in reproductive anatomy, sexual biology, fertility and infertility, contraception, and sexually transmitted diseases.

November 13, 2015

Teresa Woodruff and Megan Castle

Source: The Conversation

Chances are that by the time you enter college in the United States, the closest thing you’ve had to reproductive education was watching an uncomfortable video in health class, maybe even before you went through puberty. It might not have answered your questions and perhaps led to some misguided assumptions about your body. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

November 2, 2015

Click Here to Listen to Radio Segment

Synopsis: Only about a third of research subjects in clinical studies are women. In basic research on animals and cells, female models are even more poorly represented. This results in poor understanding of how new drugs work on women and occasional drug recalls when major side effects are discovered after the fact. Experts discuss why such an imbalance occurs, its results, and how the problem is being addressed.

Host: Reed Pence. Guests: Dr. Teresa Woodruff, Director, Women’s Health Research Institute, Northwestern University; Dr. Melina Kibbe, Professor of Surgery, Northwestern University; Dr. Kathryn Sandberg, Director, Center for the Study of Sex Differences in Health, Aging & Disease, Georgetown Univeresity

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