Recently, WBEZ Chicago’s Eight Forty-Eight came to the Oncofertility Consortium to interview Dr. Woodruff about fertility preservation for cancer patients.  While the interview mainly discussed new techniques that will provide hope for cancer patients facing potential infertility, the interview also discussed the Illinois Women’s Health Registry and the Oncofertility Saturday Academy.

From the WBEZ website:

Last year, Dr. Teresa Woodruff won a $21 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to create the Oncofertility Consortium. There she hopes to develop new fertility treatments for people who have undergone treatment for cancer. While many people can survive a cancer diagnosis, the treatments can destroy fertility. Dr. Woodruff runs The Woodruff Lab at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and also runs the Oncofertility Saturday Academy. It brings young women from a small high school on Chicago’s South Side into the lab to learn basic biology and clinical medicine.

The audio of the interview is included!

Eight Forty-Eight Interview

A new blog for the Institute for Women’s Health Research Launched today!   Check it out here.

Established in November of 2007, the Institute for Women’s Health Research was created at Northwestern University to help accelerate basic science and clinical research that will advance our knowledge of women’s health. Their mission is to increase the women’s health research portfolio at Northwestern University and their clinical affiliates; they focus on 5 ambitious goals to accomplish this mission:

• To foster research that explores the sex and gender determinants of health and disease with an emphasis on women
• To encourage interdisciplinary research, diversity inclusiveness and a comprehensive approach to women’s health research
• To prepare researchers, scientists and clinicians who understand the sex and gender determinants of health and disease; develop leadership among women and girls interested in science
• To accelerate the translation of basic science research into clinical practice
• To become the authoritative resource for the community on women’s health issues and provide opportunities for the community to engage in the advancement of women’s health

The inaugural session of the Cardiology Summer Academy just ended. It gave seniors from the Young Women’s Leadership Academy Charter School a chance to experience the world of the heart through real-life experiences at Northwestern Memorial’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. The program’s success was noted in an article by the Chicago Tribune.

The week-long summer experience for the small group of high school students is one of the science academies run by the Women’s Health Science Program at the Feinberg School of Medicine. The Summer Academy is designed to educate female high school students who are considering pursuing a career in science or medicine and to teach them about cardiology and cardiovascular health.

Megan Faurot is the director of education programs for the Institute for Women’s Health Research at Feinberg. She is also in charge of the Oncofertility Saturday Academy. “My goal is to create engaging and authentic learning experiences for high school girls to inspire and prepare them to successfully pursue careers in science and medicine,” she said.

The students participate in different activities such as watching cardiac surgery, performing dissections and getting CPR certified. Another major goal of the program is to increase the students’ knowledge of their own heart health so the curriculum also includes daily personal training sessions, lectures on heart disease and prevention and heart-healthy cooking demonstrations and meals.

Megan Faurot, the director of education programs at the Institute for Women’s Health Research, appeared in a Q&A article on the Medill Reports Chicago Web site on May 13th. She talks about how she applies her skills as a teacher to work with scientists and clinicians to develop educational programs for high school students, such as the Oncofertility Saturday Academy. 

Read the article here: Science educator moves from classroom to boardroom.