Northwestern Panel at NIH Workshop to Support Team Science, Influence Women’s Health Research
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Andrea Dunaif, MD, Charles F. Kettering Professor of Medicine, chief, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Molecular Medicine in the Feinberg School of Medicine Department of Medicine. |
Members of the Team Science initiative at Northwestern University will moderate and serve on a panel at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) conference to take place October 14â16 on the Chicago campus. Panelists are internationally renowned researchers that work in the areas of communication, management and sociology to advance awareness and practice of this discipline.
The science of Team Science promotes team-based research by working closely with investigators to examine the process by which research teams organize themselves. This includes how they think and do their work together to achieve research breakthroughs that would not be attainable by individual or additive efforts.
“This is an area where Northwestern is an international leader,” said Andrea Dunaif, MD, Charles F. Kettering Professor of Medicine, chief, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Molecular Medicine in the Feinberg School of Medicine Department of Medicine, and chair of the planning committee for the event. “There is tremendous interest in how you get people to work in scientific teams. We are excited to be showcasing this area of expertise.”
The goals of Team Science mirror those expressed in the strategic vision of J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, vice president for medical affairs and Lewis Landsberg Dean of the Feinberg School of Medicine. Jameson’s vision for the medical school — summed up by the words alignment, innovation and impact — is embodied by Team Science, as the discipline studies how team members from various institutions and areas of expertise work together to organize, communicate and best optimize to achieve effective outcomes.
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Holly Falk-Krzesinski, PhD, research assistant professor, director of research team support at the NUCATS Institute. |
“Issues related to women’s health tend to be complex medical problems,” said Holly Falk-Krzesinski, PhD, research assistant professor, director of research team support at the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute, and Team Science panel moderator at the conference. “The only way to address these problems and find solutions is for researchers to work in large teams.”
The Team Science panel will take place on Thursday, October 15 in Thorne Auditorium in the Arthur Rubloff Building at 375 East Chicago Avenue. The panel is part of a larger event — a three-day conference, “Moving Into the Future: New Dimensions and Strategies for Women’s Health Research for the National Institutes of Health,” which is cohosted by the ORWH, Feinberg and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The conference is open to the public and designed to promote an interactive discussion involving leading scientists from across the nation, women’s health advocates, public policy experts, healthcare providers and the general public.
“This event is an opportunity for members of the Feinberg community — faculty and even students — to offer strategic input into the new research agenda for a major office at the NIH,” Dunaif said. “The Office of Research on Women’s Health is going out and getting grass roots suggestions; participants will be contributing to scientific ideas that will guide policy and, ultimately, result in requests for NIH grant applications for which they can apply.”
The ORWH has launched a series of four regional, scientific workshops and public hearing to ensure that sex and gender factors affecting women’s health continue to be on the cutting edge of science. The meeting at Northwestern University is the final workshop. The ideas and recommendations emerging from this conference and the other regional conferences will help form future women’s health research priorities at the NIH.