Awards, Honors, and Grants

Investigators from the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology were awarded the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Specialized Center of Research Excellence (SCORE) U54 grant for a five-year, multi-project investigation of neural processing of stress and adverse health outcomes in aging women. 

U54 SCORE grants fund research centers nationally that support interdisciplinary approaches to advancing translational research on sex differences. SCORE institutions bridge results from basic science projects to clinical research studies pertinent to improving health in women. 

Led by the Connors Center’s Brigham/Harvard Center for Stress and Neural Regulation of Reproductive Aging Health Outcomes, the Brigham site is one of eleven national SCOREs on Sex Difference supported by the NIH. Hadine Joffe, MD, MSc, is the center’s principal investigator.

The U54 center grant assembles a network of investigators from across Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School (HMS) to lead three major research projects and three cores (sleep resource, leadership, career and education) that constitute the SCORE.

The Brigham team comprises:

• Jorge Chavarro, MD, ScM, ScD, Channing Division of Network Medicine
• Hadine Joffe, MD, MSc, Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology and Department of Psychiatry
• Ursula Kaiser, MD, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension,
• Elizabeth Klerman, MD, PhD, Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders
• Pamela Mahon, PhD, Department of Psychiatry
• JoAnn Manson, MD, MPH, DrPH, Division of Preventive Medicine and Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology
• Victor Navarro, PhD, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension
• Kathryn Rexrode, MD, MPH, Division of Women’s Health
• Janet Rich-Edwards, ScD, MPH, Division of Women’s Health and Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology

The team also includes Emily Oken, MD, MPH, of the Department of Population Medicine at HMS.

Investigators will study the role of stress and its neural mechanisms in reproductive aging health outcomes that are associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia in women as they age. Research from this SCORE seeks to reduce adverse health consequences of reproductive aging among postmenopausal women. 

The NIH is the country’s medical research agency and includes 27 institutes and centers. It is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research while investigating the causes, treatments and cures for common and rare diseases. The SCORE Center grant is the signature scientific initiative of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the NIH. The Brigham/Harvard SCORE is funded by the National Institute of Aging.