Career Enhancement Core

The Brigham/Harvard Reproductive Outcomes of Stress and Aging (ROSA) SCORE focuses on stress exposures and how neural regulation transmits stress to worsen the health of women across and after menopause. The overarching scientific goal of the ROSA SCORE renewal proposal is to investigate the impact of stress exposures occurring at both the individual and neighborhood level on core menopause symptoms – vasomotor symptoms (VMS), sleep, mood, memory, and cognition. Stressors such as excessive nocturnal light exposure – artificial light at night (ALAN) – represent group-level factors that can affect entire neighborhoods, potentially increasing their risk for dementia. These neighborhood factors may interact with individual factors to negatively impact VMS, sleep, mood, and cognitive problems, including memory. Within this framework, the Career Enhancement Core (CEC) will continue to provide a rich research and learning program for training the next generation of investigators in women’s health research focused on stress, neural regulation, menopause, sleep, neuropsychological outcomes, and cognitive decline. Our successful CEC will continue to fund, mentor, and educate early-career investigators through pilot grants, educational programming, and travel fellowships. In this renewal, we add new support of pipeline programs to engage students much earlier in their education. CEC Specific Aims are 1) to provide early-career investigators with robust mentored experience in and support for conducting translational research on women’s health focused on the inter-relationships of reproductive aging, stress, VMS, sleep, psychological outcomes, and cognitive decline through Pilot Project Awards, Travel Fellowships, and mentorship; 2) to implement a robust educational program for ROSA SCORE CEC participants and for Brigham/Harvard and national SCORE scientists through seminars, work-in-progress sessions, and dissemination of knowledge; and 3) to expand the pipeline of new investigators in women’s health research through engaging with student pipeline programs. Supporting these aims will not only advance the mission of the ROSA SCORE, but also promote the development of future investigators in women’s health, menopause, and neurocognitive outcomes. In addition to continuing our interdisciplinary training and mentorship program, the CEC leverages very strong institutional support, programs, and infrastructure. The CEC will work closely with all of the ROSA SCORE Projects, as well as the Sleep and Light Resource Core and the Leadership Administrative Core, leveraging a deep and committed research infrastructure in women’s health, menopause, sleep medicine, neuroscience, memory, and cognition to meet the career enhancement needs of CEC participants. The CEC will continue to build a robust educational resource for investigators based both at Brigham/Harvard and across the national SCORE network.