Upcoming Summit on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility
11.13.06
UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and Commonweal's Center on Health and the Environment will hold a groundbreaking summit in late January, 2007.
Called "Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility," the summit will gather together dozens of researchers, patient advocates, clinicians, and policy makers to share information on the ways that environmental contaminants affect reproductive and developmental health across the human lifespan.
The conference will emphasize the need to translate
research data into information that clinics and public health agencies can use for preventing disease, increasing public awareness, and developing both research agendas and public policies aimed at protecting human reproductive health.
"What's unique about the summit is its interdisciplinary nature," says Dr. Tracey Woodruff, PhD, a research scientist with the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies and a co-director of the summit. "We will have very famous people talking about both the health and environmental angles of environmental reproductive health. That doesn't happen very often."
Summit organizers aim to answer three key questions in the course of the meetings: a) what is the current science on environmental reproductive health? b) given the state of current science, what can and should clinicians do care for their patients' reproductive health? and c) what are the priorities for both research and policy making?
The summit will take place January 28-30, 2007 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA.
Register by December 15th, 2006 to obtain best fee rate.
Program, registration and other kinds of information can be found at www.ucsf.edu/coe/prhesummit.html. |
Co-chairs of the conference are Linda Giudice, MD, PhD, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF; and Philip R. Lee, MD, Founding Chairman, Collaborative on Health and the Environment; Chancellor and Professor (Social Medicine) Emeritus, UCSF; Former US Assistant Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare.
Co-Directors are Alison Carlson, Facilitator, CHE Fertility/Pregnancy Compromise Work Group; Dixie Horning, Executive Director, UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health; and Tracey Woodruff (on sabbatical from US EPA.)
Funding support for the Summit, to date, has come from the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, New York Community Trust, Adeza Biomedical Corporation, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (National Institutes of Health), and a foundation and an individual who have made private donations.
PRHE is pursuing funding to support the attendance of trainees in medicine, nursing, public health, and research, as well as representatives of environmental justice, reproductive advocacy, and community health organizations who would otherwise be unable to attend. An update on trainee/ scholarship funding will be available in early December.
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