Emory University BIRCWH Program

The primary goal of the Emory Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) is to develop a sustainable program to increase the number and the skills of investigators at Emory through a mentored research and career development experience leading to an independent scientific career that benefits the health of women; advance research on sex influences on health; and encourage interdisciplinary research methodology. We are dedicated to being a continuously learning program, using input from our rigorous evaluation process to iteratively improve our program through the introduction of new initiatives. Our strategy for the next cycle is to leverage the experience and the lessons learned to date to build on the success of the prior cycles, strengthening and retaining initiatives that were successful and introducing new ones based on input from continuous program evaluation. To date, we have focused on the development of a sustainable BIRCWH program with emphasis on: a) Maintaining a cohesive leadership structure; b) Identifying, recruiting and retaining a cohort of junior faculty with interest in women’s health research; c) Standing up a tailored didactic research training that leverages existing infrastructure to maximize economies of scale; and d) Developing an interdisciplinary mentored career development program. We strongly believe we are now well positioned to consolidate and to further enhance the impact of our program. In the next funding cycle, our Program Aims will include: 1) Expansion and strengthening of our program administrative structure to meet the growing needs of the Emory BIRCWH and leverage it as a tool for leadership development for the next generation of women’s health researchers; 2) Refine our women’s health tailored didactic training in research fundamentals and methods with emphasis on personalized pathways, leadership development and scientific translation; and 3) Further improve the mentorship experience of our mentored research program with its multilevel mentoring plan by expanding advanced mentorship training for scholars and lead mentors, and providing more access to biostatistics and advanced grant writing support and mentorship. The cornerstone of our program plan will continue to be the individualized training pathway that includes women’s health tailored didactic coursework on the fundamentals of research coupled with scholar-initiated hypothesis driven mentored research projects. We anticipate training 12 Scholars during the next cycle.