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» Possibility of Scholarships for the IGH Conference

Although it has not yet been confirmed that funds are available for this purpose, scholarships may be available for this event. If you are interested in a possible scholarship, please contact tara@f2fe.com to identify yourself as an interested participant in the scholarship program for the conference.

 

 

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Dr. Chloe Bird, Keynote Presenter
Presentation: Why do we need an Institute of Gender and Health?

Chloe E. Bird, PhD, is a Senior Sociologist at RAND, Professor of Sociology at the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, Associate Editor of Women’s Health Issues, Deputy Editor of Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Chair of the Gender Interest Group of AcademyHealth. Her research focuses on assessing the determinants of gender and racial/ethnic differences in physical and mental health and health care. She is particularly interested in determining how social and physical characteristics of neighborhoods contribute to health disparities.  Dr. Bird is PI of two National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded studies.  One assesses neighborhood effects on incident cardiovascular disease among women based on data from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), the other examines the impact of neighborhoods and behaviors on men’s and women’s cardiovascular mortality using geocoded mortality-linked National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data.  In her book, Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choice and Social Policies, she and coauthor Patricia Rieker integrate social and biological models to improve understanding of how differences in men’s and women’s lives contribute to differences in their health.  This work expands the study of health and health disparities by shedding light on the how decisions beyond the level of the individual shape men’s and women’s opportunities to pursue a healthy life.

 

Dr. Gillian Einstein, Panel Speaker
Presentation: The X Factor: Accounting for Sex in Biomedical Research

Gillian Einstein is a neuroscientist who has published in vision, Alzheimer's and aging research, sex differences, and women's health. She has edited and annotated a book of classic papers in Hormones and Behavior called, Sex and the Brain (MIT Press, 2007).

She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and The Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Senior Scientist at Women's College Research Institute, Member of the Scientific Staff of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Senior Fellow of University College, and a member of both the Institute for Human Development, Life Course, Aging and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

She is also founder and Director of the Collaborative Graduate Program in Women's Health at the University of Toronto, founding member of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences, and a temporary advisor to WHO on the psychological effects of female genital cutting/mutilation. She served on the faculty of the Department of Neurobiology, Duke University where she founded and directed the first year program, Exploring the Mind and was the recipient of the Alumni Undergraduate Teaching Award. She has also been a Scientific Review Officer at the National Institutes of Health (US), and the Associate Director of the Centre for Research in Women's Health at the University of Toronto. She has been a mentor in the Institute of Gender and Health's Summer Institute (2009, 2010) and In the spring term of 2010 she was a visiting professor with the Committee for Degrees in Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Gillian's interests are in memory, sex/gender representations in the nervous system, mixed methods, and the bridge between our scientific understanding of the nervous system and larger concerns having to do with self, identity, feminism, and the nature of science. Her research program focuses on three major areas: 1) the neurobiological effects of such cultural practices as female genital cutting and 2) the effects of the ovulatory cycle on mood and memory; and 3) the representation of the female body in the brain. The key question underlying all these projects is how gender is instantiated on the body.

Her website is: http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/einstein

 

Dr. Larry Goldenberg, Panel Speaker
Presentation: Of Boys and Men: The State of the Science on Boys’ and Men’s Health

Dr Larry Goldenberg received his medical degree in 1978 from the University of Toronto, and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada in 1984, following urology residency at the University of British Columbia (UBC).  He is a founding Director of the Vancouver Prostate Centre and is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Urologic Sciences at UBC.

Dr Goldenberg is a Past-President of the Canadian Urological Association, the Western Section, American Urological Association, the NorthWest Urological Society, and the Canadian Academy of Urologic Surgeons.  He has been co-Chairman of the annual Issues and Controversies in Prostate Care conference for 19 years.

In 2006 he was recognized for his contributions to health care in BC by being inducted into the Order of British Columbia, and was also appointed a member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.  In September 2008 he was awarded the British Columbia Innovation Council’s “ Science and Technology Champion of the Year”.  In February 2009 he was made an honorary member of the AUA and this year he recieved an AUA Distinguished Service Award.  In December 2009 he was awarded the Order of Canada.

 

Dr. Paula Johnson, Keynote Speaker
Presentation: From Knowledge to Action: Using Sex, Gender and Health Research to Improve Policy and Practice

Dr. Paula A. Johnson is the Executive Director of the Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology and Chief of the Division of Women's Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Johnson has brought her broad range of experience as a physician, a researcher and as an expert in public health and health policy to the Connors Center. The Connors Center works to transform the health of women through discovering how disease is expressed differently in women and men as well as integrating leading-edge research about women's health into the delivery of care. The Center is unique in its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to women’s health, which influences health policy, addresses the health of women globally, and trains the next generation of leadership in women’s health. 

Dr. Johnson, an internationally recognized cardiologist, founded the Center for Cardiovascular Disease in Women at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2000. Dr. Johnson also founded the Gretchen S. and Edward A. Fish Center for Women’s Health, an interdisciplinary practice with 12 specialties that also serves as a base of research to improve both the health and health care of women.

She is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, and received her MD and MPH degrees from Harvard. In 2009 Dr. Johnson was named to the Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health, Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health. In 2007, she was appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to become a Commissioner of the Board of the Boston Public Health Commission, and later became its chairman. Dr. Johnson is the recipient of many awards recognizing her contributions in women's and minority health and is featured as a national leader in medicine by the National Library of Medicine. She serves on several boards and lives in Brookline, MA with her husband and two children. 

 

Dr. Olga Kovalchuk, Panel Speaker
Presentation: The X Factor: Accounting for Sex in Biomedical Research

Degrees:
1992 – diploma of physician with honors (B.Med.) – Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical University, Ukraine
1994 – MD (honors), Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical University, Ukraine
1998 – PhD (Genetics), National Center for Hygiene, Kiev, Ukraine

Current Position:
~ Professor (with tenure) and Board of Governors’ Research Chair in Radiation Biology;
CIHR Chair in Gender and Health; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lethbridge, Canada
~ CIHR Institute of Gender and Health Advisory Board Member (elected in 2009)
~University Representative to CIHR

Professional Experience:
07.2010 – now – Professor (with tenure) at the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
07.2006 – 07.2010 – Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
01.2006 – now – Associate Member of the Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute
08.2001 – 03.2006 – Assistant Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
09.2000 – 07.2001 – Postdoctoral researcher in the Health Assessment 2-Toxicology/Cell Biology Department in Novartis (later Syngenta) AG in Basel, Switzerland.
08.1998 – 09.2000 – Postdoc in the Molecular Biology laboratory of Professor Barbara Hohn at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, a Branch of the Novartis Research Foundation in Basel, Switzerland
09.1996 – 08.1998 – visiting scientist in the Molecular Biology laboratory of Professor Barbara Hohn at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, a Branch of the Novartis Research Foundation in Basel, Switzerland
1996 – 1998 – visiting researcher at the Chernobyl Center for International Research, Chernobyl, Ukraine
1995 – 1997 – researcher in the Genetics Laboratory at the Biology Department of the  Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical Academy (since 2009 - University), Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine

Research Interests:
- Sex differences in radiation responses and carcinogenesis
- Radiation epigenetics and role of epigenetic changes in genome stability and carcinogenesis
- Epigenetics of carcinogenesis
- Epigenetic regulation of the cancer treatment responses
- Radiation-induced DNA damage, repair and recombination

Awards and Honours:
2010 –Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award Recipient
2009 – One of 2 scientists representing Canada at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of New Champions in Dalian, China (Nominated by CIHR and selected by the International InterAcademy Panel)
2008-2013 – CIHR Mid-Career Research Chair in Gender and Health
2007-2012 – Board of Governors’ Research Chair, University of Lethbridge
2007 – Honorable Professor of the R.E. Kavetsky Institute of Experimental Oncology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
1999 - A Prize of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine for young researchers for scientific excellence.

 

Dr. Jeffrey S. Mogil, Panel Speaker
Presentation: The X Factor: Accounting for Sex in Biomedical Research

Jeffrey S. Mogil was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1966.  He received a B.Sc. (Honours) in Psychology from the University of Toronto in 1988, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA in 1993.  After a postdoctoral fellowship in Portland, OR from 1993 to 1996, he joined the faculty of the Dept. of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He moved to McGill University in 2001, and is currently the E.P. Taylor Professor of Pain Studies (a Chair previously occupied by Dr. Ronald Melzack) and the Canada Research Chair in the Genetics of Pain (Tier I).

Dr. Mogil has made seminal contributions to the field of pain genetics and is the author of most major reviews of the subject, including an edited book, The Genetics of Pain (IASP Press, 2004).  He is also a recognized authority in the fields of sex differences in pain and analgesia, and pain testing methods in the laboratory mouse.  Dr. Mogil is the author of over 150 journal articles and book chapters since 1992, and has given over 190 invited lectures in that same period.  He holds or has held funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Genome Canada, Neuroscience Canada and the pharmaceutical/biotech industry.  He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Neal E. Miller New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research (1998), the John C. Liebeskind Early Career Scholar Award from the American Pain Society (1998), the Patrick D. Wall Young Investigator Award from the International Association for the Study of Pain (2002), the Early Career Award from the Canadian Pain Society (2004) and a Neuropathic Pain Award from Pfizer Canada (2010).  He currently serves as a Section Editor (Neurobiology) at the journal, Pain, and is the chair of the Scientific Program Committee of the upcoming 13th World Congress on Pain.

 

Dr. John Oliffe, Panel Speaker
Presentation: Of Boys and Men: The State of the Science on Boys’ and Men’s Health

John Oliffe is Associate Professor at the School of Nursing, University of British Columbia and Committee Member on the advisory board for the CIHR Institute of Gender and Health. His men’s health research program addresses the cardiac health of South Asian Canadian immigrant men, smoking patterns of fathers, the role of prostate cancer support groups in health promotion, and men’s depression and suicide. For more information on his current projects and publications please visit his website at www.menshealthresearch.ubc.ca. He has co-edited a book addressing gender, sex and health methods due for release early 2011, and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles to address diverse men’s health issues. In his presentation, he will speak to a tripartite of men’s health research issues – empirical, methodological and theoretical.

 

Dr. Yves Tremblay, Panel Speaker
Presentation: Of Boys and Men: The State of the Science on Boys’ and Men’s Health

Dr. Yves Tremblay is a full professor at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec, pavillon CRCHUL-Laval University. In 1980, he was awarded his bachelor’s degree in chemistry, followed by a doctorate in physiology in 1984. In 1990, Dr. Tremblay joined the department of physiology as a lecturer at Laval. From 1991 through 2002, he was an assistant professor, then full professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology. Between 1991 and 2003, he was a Research Scholar Junior 1, 2, and Senior with the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ). Since 2003, Dr. Tremblay has been recognized by the FRSQ as a career research professor. He is also a member of CRCHUL Reproduction Axis, Perinatal and Child Health and of Laval University’s Centre de recherche en biologie de la reproduction.  His expertise is directly related to fetal development and gene expression of steroid forming enzymes involved and in their action within both the placenta and the fetal lungs. Androgens synthesized by the fetal lungs, estradiol synthesized by the placenta and glucocorticoids produced by the adrenals do control key events in fetal development by means of their tissue-specific expression; in both cases, a spatio-temporal disruption in the metabolism of androgens, estrogens and glucocorticoids during pregnancy is directly related to developmental pathologies.  He also encourages the gender/sex-based approach in formulation and analysis of the problematic and he promotes a transdisciplinary research to document the consequences of the fetal sex on lung development and how it impacts on the fate of extreme premature in infants in case of critical medical conditions.  This research has specific aspects that hold potential for clinical applications: studying the metabolism of steroids by the lungs and placenta is applicable to physiology, while their actions on fetal development, and, more specifically, lung maturation, has clinical potential in the area of human health.

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