Partnerships

The Connors-BRI Center for Research on Women’s Health and Sex/Gender Medicine has brought together BWH faculty who are highly regarded in their respective fields in gender biology and women’s health. Together, they promote the discovery of mechanisms across disciplines that explain sex differences in morbidity and mortality as well as disorders specific to women. The Center takes a lifespan perspective to identify etiologic mechanisms during fetal development, puberty, adulthood and aging. The Center highlights focus on periods specific to women such as child-bearing years, perimenopause and menopause. The Center is particularly interested in fostering translational models involving hormones and genes to investigate sex-specific vulnerabilities to illnesses and disorders specific to women.

Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM) was created in response to the considerable funding gap, historical exclusion, and underrepresentation of women in health research. It was founded in 2020 by Carolee Lee, who convened a group of businesswomen motivated to create an innovative dialogue and establish data that could impact this situation. WHAM believes that the lives of women and men will vastly improve through research that is equally inclusive of women and men in trials – and female and male animals in preliminary research. By conducting research in parity and reporting gender outcomes separately, health breakthroughs will be accelerated, and health outcomes around the world improved.

The Connors Center is a founding Member and Lead Scientific Advisor with The WHAM Collaborative for Women’s Health Research. The Connors Center shares the bold vision of improving the health of women and a commitment to joining forces to advance scientific discovery for the benefit of all women.