VCU Celebrates Excellence in Women’s Health Research

By Frances Dumenci

The Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women’s Health hosted the Ninth Annual Women’s Health Research Day, a networking opportunity celebrating and promoting excellence in interdisciplinary women’s health research.

This year’s event, “From Bench, To Bedside, To Community,” was chaired by Susan Kornstein, M.D., professor of psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology in the VCU School of Medicine and executive director of the VCU Institute for Women’s Health, and included three faculty presenters.

• Ponjola Coney, M.D., senior associate dean for faculty affairs in the VCU School of Medicine, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the VCU Center on Health Disparities, presented the keynote lecture, “Health Disparities: Where Are We Now?”
  
  
• Rosalie Corona, Ph.D., associate professor of clinical psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences, presented “Talking about Health Behaviors in Latino Families.”
  
  
• Edmond (Trey) Wickham III, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, and director of research, Comprehensive Pediatric Obesity Research and Treatment Center, Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, presented “Circulating Progenitor Cells and Vascular Dysfunction.”

Following the presentations, a poster session featured women’s health research displays by VCU faculty and students covering a wide range of women’s health topics. There were three poster categories, including basic science, clinical and socio-behavioral research.

Awards were given to the best posters in each category. Winners included Aileen Garcia-Vargas (Basic Science), a student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Akimitsu Yamada, Ph.D., (Clinical), post-doctoral student in the Department of Surgery, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the VCU Massey Cancer Center; and Kellie Carlyle Palazzolo, Ph.D. (Socio-Behavioral), assistant professor and graduate program director in the Department of Social and Behavioral Health.

In addition, Yamada’s poster, titled “Human breast cancers that co-express sphingosine kinase 1 and ABCC1 have significant shorter disease free survival,” received the Elizabeth Fries Young Investigator Award. This award was created in memory of Elizabeth Fries, Ph.D., a VCU psychology professor who served as director of research for the Institute for Women’s Health. Fries died in 2005. The award is given to a young researcher who shows promise for improving women’s health.

Victoria Menzies, Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Nursing, was given the Building Interdisciplinary Bridges in Women’s Health Research award for her poster, “Unique Cytokine Signature in the Serum of Women with Fibromyalgia.” This award honors the poster that best demonstrated interdisciplinary investigator collaboration in women’s health.

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