University of Michigan physicians, scientists, and medical students came to the annual Women’s Health Leadership Board Meeting on December 8, 2022, to pitch their research projects and promising ideas to a crowd of colleagues, university leaders, and women’s health advocates and donors.
The annual event welcomes U-M researchers seeking funding for their projects to present to attendees, who then vote on which project will receive support from the Women’s Health Innovation Fund.
The fund provides resources to physicians and researchers who are in the early stages of launching important scientific research on women’s health topics. This support helps to advance the creative concepts and revolutionary studies that could lead to the next big breakthrough in medicine.
Each presenter received $20,000 from the Women’s Health Innovation Fund, and meeting attendees voted to select the winner of an additional $10,000. This year’s winners were third-year U-M medical student, Joshua Goyert, and Molly Stout, M.D, the Morton R Lazar Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Innovation, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the section head of the Maternal Fetal Medicine Division at U-M.
Dr. Stout and Goyert received $10,000 from the Women’s Health Innovation Fund to advance their project, “Progress in predicting preterm birth.” Two attendees also pledged to donate $30,000 each to provide additional support to some of the other projects.
The following are the projects and researchers who presented them at the meeting:
- Samantha Schon, M.D. — Weighing in on Patient-Centered Care: A Qualitative Assessment of Infertility Patients with Obesity
- Alex Peahl, M.D., M.Sc. — A virtual service-learning program for improving support and education in pregnancy
- Daphna Stroumsa, M.D., MPH, and Bori Lesser-Lee — Supporting trans learners and clinicians at Michigan Medicine
- Shitanshu Uppal, MBBS, and Hannah McLaughlin, M.D. — Implementation of a Virtual Care Pathway for Chemotherapy in Patients with Gynecologic Malignancies
- Marie Bangura, M.D., Emma Lawrence, M.D., M.S., and Payton Schmidt, M.D. — Enhancing Vaginal Surgical Training in Ghana Through Simulation
- Courtney Streur, M.D., and Monica Rosen, M.D. — Co-Developing an Online Sexual Health Education Intervention for Adolescent Girls with Physical Disabilities