In an effort to strengthen women's health research in a variety of disciplines, the National Institutes of Health has awarded a grant to the University of California, San Francisco and to the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland to create a scholarship program to train young investigators in women's health and bolster research in this area.

Many of the scholars chosen for this program, called the Women's Health Interdisciplinary Scholarship Program for Research (WHISPR), will be women, said Deborah Grady, MD, UCSF professor of epidemiology and medicine and scholarship program director. UCSF/Kaiser is one of 12 sites nationwide to receive a portion of the $6 million per year the NIH has dedicated to this effort. Steven Cummings, MD, assistant dean for clinical research at UCSF and professor of medicine, is the principle investigator for WHISPR.

"Research in women's health is mushrooming and this creates exciting opportunities for young clinicians and trainees," Cummings said. "The NIH program is the first nationwide effort to train new faculty to do clinical research in women's health. It is the first major collaboration between UCSF and Kaiser to train researchers. We are excited because UCSF and Kaiser are national leaders in women's health and we are a rich place for young faculty to begin successful careers."

Joseph Selby, MD, MPH, director of Kaiser's division of research will lead the program at that institution.

"There is a perceived need from the NIH to address some clear inadequacies in research in women's health. And there is a dearth of women doing women's health research," Grady said. "The idea of this program is two-fold: to increase the amount of quality research in women's health and to increase the number of women doing clinical research."

The program is geared toward junior faculty-clinical researchers who are in the beginning of their career, have some training in research methods and have a strong interest in wom
'"/>

Contact: Leslie Harris
lharris@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-885-7277
University of California - San Francisco
6-Sep-2000