Ohio State University Creates a New Women’s Health Research Program

Sarah “Sally” Ross Soter and the Soter Foundation are donating $15 million to establish The Sarah Ross Soter Women’s Health Research Program at Ohio State University. The initiative will establish a nation-leading hub for translational research that creates healthier futures for women across their lifespans.

The program will be housed in the Pelotonia Research Center in Ohio State’s new Carmenton innovation district on west campus. The five-story, 305,000-square-foot laboratory building is equipped with the spaces, technologies, and resources needed for researchers to work across disciplines and accelerate new discoveries. The Sarah Ross Soter Women’s Health Research Neighborhood on the fifth floor will house more than eight principal investigators and their teams focused on interrelated women’s health issues.

“We do not believe that today’s inadequacies in women’s health are destined to be tomorrow’s reality,” says Carol R. Bradford, dean of the Ohio State College of Medicine. “With this gift, we will lead the way in defining the best prevention and treatments for women as well as in creating new standards of care.”

“A gift like this is transformative because it’s going to allow us to really focus on women’s health,” added Kristin Stanford, professor of physiology and cell biology in the College of Medicine and associate director of the Dorothy M. Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute. “For too long we stayed in one lane with animal studies because it was cheaper and easier to do, and we assumed results for men and women would be the same. We learned pretty quickly that’s not the case. We now have a lot of catching up to do.”

Philanthropy has been a lifelong passion for Soter, whose family has made generous gifts to Ohio State over the years, including a $10 million gift that established the Ross Heart Hospital, named after her late father. In 2005, Soter established an endowed chair in women’s cardiovascular health research at the university.