Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
A team from the University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center have received a $3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to uncover why early-stage breast cancer becomes invasive in some patients, with a particular focus on Hawaiʻi’s diverse communities. The five-year project aims to identify the biological mechanisms that cause ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) to progress to invasive cancers. Through this work, the research team seeks to improve risk identification and enable tailored treatments plans for individual patients.
The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health will provide up to $9.6 million in funding for a new project at Virginia Tech that aims to better understand and predict women’s health outcomes by investigating how hormones shape the structure and function of vaginal tissue across the lifespan. The research team will use mathematical and computational modeling and machine learning to examine how vaginal tissue changes during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum recovery, aging, and menopause. The work could help better identify women’s health risks and develop strategies for prevention and treatment.
The University of Cincinnati College of Nursing was selected to participate in a national multisite educational initiative focused on infectious disease during pregnancy, with a particular attention to the rise in congenital syphilis cases, which occur when syphilis passes from a pregnant person to their baby during pregnancy. Led by the University of Missouri-Kansas City with support from the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health through founding from the CDC Foundation, the project aims to equip healthcare providers with current knowledge and practical resources to identify, diagnose, and treat infections during pregnancy. At the University of Cincinnati, faculty have worked to integrate two National STD Curriculum modules with a focus on syphilis into an existing required course for women’s health nurse practitioner students.