Future Directions in Menopause Research: Optimizing Midlife Health of Women Roundtable
Date and Time
– May 16, 2024, 12:45 PM EDTVirtual Only.
“The Future Directions in Menopause Research: Optimizing Midlife Health of Women Roundtable” is the launch event for NIH’s Women’s Health Roundtable Series on important women’s health topics as part of the White House Women’s Health Research Initiative. This series was developed as a recommended action in response to the Presidential Memorandum to bring attention to priority topics within the Department of Health and Human Services and disseminate information on federally supported research areas. The roundtable series will be led by NIH institute, center, and office leadership and will engage the research community and the public to bring greater awareness to female-specific health conditions (e.g., menopause and endometriosis), as well as diseases and conditions that predominantly affect women (e.g., autoimmune diseases), and present or progress differently in women (e.g., heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.).
This launch event will be hosted by the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) and the Office of Disease Prevention (ODP). This roundtable aims to inform and spark dialogue around the science on menopause and highlight NIH-supported work in the menopausal research domain. It also furthers initiatives outlined within the Executive Order on Advancing Women’s Health Research and Innovation to identify and explore gaps in women’s health and diseases and conditions that arise during women’s midlife and later years.
Please join us to hear remarks from ORWH Director Janine Austin Clayton, M.D., FARVO; NIH Director Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D.; and ODP Director David M. Murray, Ph.D. Following these remarks will be a panel discussion on how NIH and the extramural community can galvanize research and charter new paths to address unanswered questions on women’s midlife health.
Mark your calendars for May 16, 2024, from 11:00 a.m.–12:45 p.m. EDT, and join the webinar here.
Time | Topic | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
11:00–11:05 a.m.
| Welcome and Call to Order
| Vivian Ota Wang, Ph.D., FACMG, CGC
|
11:05–11:15 a.m.
| Introductory Remarks Regarding the Future Direction of Menopause Research
| Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D.
|
11:15–11:30 a.m.
| ORWH Director’s Introduction of the Future Directions in Menopause Research Event, Menopause Roundtable, and
| Janine Austin Clayton, M.D., FARVO
|
11:30–11:45 a.m.
| Remarks on the Upcoming Pathways
| David M. Murray, Ph.D.
|
11:45–11:50 a.m.
| Introduction of Optimizing Midlife Health of Women Roundtable
| Sarah M. Temkin, M.D. Chhanda Dutta, Ph.D. |
11:50 a.m.–12:40 p.m.
| Panel: Optimizing Midlife Health of Women Roundtable
| Panelists Susan D. Reed, M.D., M.P.H., M.S. Hadine Joffe M.D., M.Sc. Samar R. El Khoudary, Ph.D., M.P.H., FAHA |
12:40–12:45 p.m.
| Closing Statement
| Janine Austin Clayton, M.D., FARVO
|
Sign language interpreting services are available upon request. Individuals who need interpreting services and/or other reasonable accommodations to participate in this event should email kathryn.koczot@nih.gov, winseckk@mail.nih.gov, and engeljo@od.nih.gov. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance of the event.
 | Dr. Susan Reed Susan D. Reed, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., is Professor Emeritus and past Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, with an adjunct appointment in Epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She is Immediate Past President of The Menopause Society. Her undergraduate and medical degrees are from Stanford, and her master’s degrees are from Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Washington. She did her obstetrics and gynecology residency training at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Reed’s research focuses on women’s health issues related to reproductive hormones, and she is internationally known for her expertise in menopause. She is the past Research Director for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) -funded Women’s Reproductive Health Research program at the University of Washington and a Principal Investigator for the NIH-funded network MsFLASH, performing clinical trials on the treatment of menopausal symptoms. She has over 170 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Reed was the Division Chief at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle from 2008–2018 and has over 40 years of clinical experience. |
 | Dr. Samar R. El Khoudary Dr. El Khoudary is a Professor and Vice Chair of Education for Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. She is a cardiovascular epidemiologist, with the main scientific research area focusing on cardiovascular epidemiology of the menopause transition. Dr. El Khoudary has evaluated associations and mechanisms linking menopause, sex hormone levels, lipids, fat deposition, and subclinical measures of vascular health in midlife women. She has received funding from the National Institute on Aging; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and American Heart Association (AHA) to support her research work on novel metrics of high-density lipoprotein composition and function, heart fat, and lipoproteins over the menopause transition. Dr. El Khoudary has published numerous manuscripts and review papers and delivered presentations at various national and international scientific meetings. She chaired the first scientific statement on menopause and cardiovascular disease, published in Circulation in 2020. Dr. El Khoudary has received several honors and awards including the Fulbright scholarship, Trudy Bush Fellowship for Cardiovascular Research in Women’s Health, New Investigator Award (2012), best paper of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (2015), the Early Investigator Award from the Endocrine Society (2016), and most recently, the Pitt Public Health Alumni Award for Research. Dr. El Khoudary is an active member of the AHA, The Menopause Society, and the European Menopause and Andropause Society. She served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Academy of Cardiology (2018), and for The Menopause Society meetings, she has chaired the poster judging committee (2017) and led the abstract review committee (2018). She is a current board of trustees member of The Menopause Society. Dr. El Khoudary is an elected Fellow of the AHA on the Council on Epidemiology and Prevention. She is an active grant reviewer for NIH and AHA and ad hoc reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals including Circulation, BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Menopause, and Maturitas. Dr. El Khoudary is an Associate Editor of the American Heart Journal Plus: Cardiology Research and Practice, a member of the editorial boards of the journal Menopause and the Journal of the American Heart Association, and a guest editor of Maturitas. Within the Department of Epidemiology, Dr. El Khoudary has taught epidemiological methods courses since 2012 for both doctoral and masters’ level students. She has mentored multiple M.P.H., M.Sc., and Ph.D. students, as well as junior faculty, and is actively involved in many of the Department of Epidemiology students’ training plans by serving on their dissertation and thesis committees. |
 | Dr. Hadine Joffe Hadine Joffe, M.D., M.Sc., is the Interim Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), where she is also the Executive Director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology and founder and Director of the Women’s Hormones and Aging Research Program. She is the Paula A. Johnson Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Joffe received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, her medical degree from Cornell University Medical College, and her master’s degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her psychiatry residency training at McLean Hospital and a fellowship in reproductive psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Joffe is an experienced academic leader, clinician, and clinical reproductive neuroscientist whose research focuses on brain health in midlife women across the menopause transition. As Director of the Women’s Hormones and Aging Research Program, her research examines the mechanisms (neural, hormonal, neurosteroid, stress, autonomic), course, downstream consequences (body fat gain), and treatment of neuropsychological symptoms (depression, insomnia, thermoregulatory disturbance, fatigue) in healthy midlife women and breast cancer survivors. Dr. Joffe has been continuously funded by the NIH to study women’s midlife health for the past 24 years, including as Principal Investigator of three R01s and a U54 multi-project Specialized Centers of Research Excellence (SCORE) on Sex Differences grant. As the Executive Director of the BWH Connors Center, Dr. Joffe oversees a comprehensive cross-departmental NIH- and philanthropically funded research program for the hospital with two thematic priorities: 1) equity in the development of novel therapeutics for diseases that affect women exclusively, predominately, and differentially, and which involve academic, biopharma, and regulatory partnerships; and 2) impact of stress and adversity on the health of women, including across under-resourced and disenfranchised communities. Over the eight years she has served in this role, Dr. Joffe has secured over $8 million in philanthropic funds to support and promote the careers of over 90 early career investigators on pilot grants and research fellowships across 20 divisions and departments. As Interim Chair of the BWH Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Joffe leads a robust team of departmental leaders to champion the clinical, educational, research, community, and philanthropic missions of the department. She has mentored an extensive number and diverse range of physicians and investigators within and beyond the fields of mental health and women’s health, supporting their progress along career paths. Dr. Joffe’s contributions to clinical work, research, and mentoring have been recognized through the BWH Distinguished Clinician Award, a national Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Fellowship, the Vivian Pinn Award for Outstanding Research in Women’s Health, The Menopause Society Thomas Clarkson Outstanding Clinical & Basic Science Research Award, and the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry, Stuart T. Hauser, M.D., Ph.D., Mentorship Award. |