Yale honors a pioneering leader in women’s health, equity

In Samit Shah’s second year as a faculty member of the Yale School of Medicine (YSM), he applied for a pilot project grant from Women’s Health Research at Yale (WHRY) to fund a study of a medical procedure aimed at more accurately diagnosing heart disease in women.

“It’s an invasive procedure that uses advanced testing to precisely identify heart problems that are more common in women, and often overlooked,” said Shah, an assistant professor of medicine and an interventional cardiologist. “It was something I was doing clinically, but I hadn’t really framed it in the context of science until I put together this proposal.”

WHRY’s founder and director, Dr. Carolyn Mazure, called him personally to let him know his proposal would be funded. The sum was modest, but the study laid the groundwork necessary for Shah to apply for larger grants that in the three years since have amounted to 10 times that initial award. And just as importantly, he said, it came with a “tremendous amount of mentorship” — from Mazure herself.

“This is the power of Carolyn Mazure,” said Shah, who is now running a large clinical research program involving patients, primarily women, from across the country with specific types of heart disorders. “She’s always a sounding board and she encourages me. But the specific thing that she does uniquely is she sees science in a broader context.  She will say, ‘What’s next? How do you scale this? How do you move the needle?’ It’s one thing to ask a question and do research to try to publish a paper. It’s another to actually change practice.

“There is no question in my mind that she has had the most profound influence on both my career trajectory and my success.”

Mazure, a pioneer and national leader in women’s health research, was honored this week by the Women Faculty Forum (WFF) with its Elga R. Wasserman Courage, Clarity, and Leadership Award. Mazure is the fourth recipient of the award, which is presented annually to a faculty or staff member who has demonstrated a commitment to “building equity, diversity and inclusion” and who has “excelled in articulating and advancing the highest aspirations” of the Yale community.

Wasserman championed women’s inclusion at Yale as a special assistant to the president under Kingman Brewster from 1969 to 1973, and worked tirelessly to ensure that female students were afforded the same opportunities as men. This year is the 100^th anniversary of Wasserman’s birth, “an exciting year for Dr. Mazure to get this award,” said Nina Stachenfeld, a senior research scientist in obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences in YSM and chair of the Women Faculty Forum.

Mazure, who is also the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor in Women’s Health Research, and professor of psychiatry and psychology, founded WHRY in 1998 as one of the country’s first research centers focused on women’s health. The center brings together faculty from across the disciplines to conduct wide-ranging research on women’s health and the influence of sex and gender on health outcomes.

The concept that women’s health ought to be studied separately was still a relatively new concept at the time of WHRY’s founding.

“It was Carolyn’s own blood, sweat, and tears that ended up growing that center,” said Margaret Bia, a professor emeritus of medicine (nephrology) who worked alongside Mazure at YSM advocating for gender equity in the early 2000s. “It all started with the seed of the thought that women are different than men and you can’t apply the results of studies with men to women. I think she’s contributed more than any other individual to growing the field of women’s health research.”

The center subsequently served as a model for the establishment of other women’s health research centers in the U.S., Bia noted.

Mazure’s vision, focus, and persistence have enabled her to continue expanding the center over time and to raise millions of dollars to support the center and to fund the pilot project grants, which essentially act as seed money for researchers to generate data to support larger, external grants, colleagues say. Those seed grants have proven critical to progress in women’s health research — nearly 60% of WHRY-affiliated researchers have gone on to receive National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants because of their pilot studies. The total external funding resulting from the data of these grants is more than $118 million.

The center is also known for its mentorship of students and junior faculty, a practice Mazure has also prioritized in other leadership roles. Stachenfeld recalls meeting Mazure for the first time when Mazure was serving as associate dean for faculty and academic affairs at YSM from 2002 to 2014. .

“A lot of people went to her at that time to get advice about what we needed to do to move up from assistant professor to associate professor and so on,” she said. “She would take a look at your CV and tell you where you were lacking or what areas to emphasize. She would look at what track you were on and make sure that you were doing the right things for that track. She was very honest and made sure you understood what was expected of you.”

As dean, Mazure also pushed for equity in faculty salaries, Bia said, and regularly spoke up if she felt a woman faculty member was being unfairly overlooked for promotion. She has also played an integral role on the Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine, known as SWIM, at YSM.

Her leadership in the field of women’s health was recognized by the Biden administration, which last November named Mazure chair of a new White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, led by first lady Jill Biden. The initiative includes $200 million from the NIH in fiscal year 2025 to help close gaps in women’s health research.

She previously served on the advisory committee for the NIH Office for Research on Women’s Health and the planning committee for the First White House Conference on Mental Health.

Mazure’s own research has focused on depression, which, according to her bio on the WHRY website, is the single greatest cause of disability for women in the U.S. and globally.

Mazure received the Wasserman award on Sept. 19 during a ceremony at the Humanities Quadrangle hosted by the Women Faculty Forum and attended by Yale President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel.

“It is a distinct honor to be recognized by one’s colleagues, and particularly with this award named for an extraordinary person who despite the many challenges, paved the way for so many women at Yale,” Mazure told Yale News. “My great thanks to all those who have supported Women’s Health Research at Yale and helped to advance our mission and improve women’s lives.”

The three previous recipients of the award were Sybil Alexandrov, a senior lector II in the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Dr. Stephanie Spangler, vice provost for health affairs and academic integrity and a clinical professor in YSM’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Services; and Akiko Iwasaki, the Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and professor of dermatology and of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and of epidemiology.