Dr. James-Todd is the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Reproductive Epidemiology and Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Learn more about this event.
Date + Time: Thursday, September 26, 2024 • 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm
Location: M1020 SPH 2 School of Public Health • 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2029
“It’s a time that women have to advocate very strongly for themselves so that their symptoms are not ignored. What’s important is that you feel that your doctor is listening to you and addressing your concerns — not just doing a checklist.”
“We want to understand how precarious employment and labor exploitation affect the health of workers within the context of occupational and environmental epidemiology and look at more structural factors that drive these issues of precarity and labor exploitation.” — Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, PhD, MPH, MA
“The underlying theme of the work that we’ve been doing is that data is needed, evidence is needed to be able to inform policy changes, to inform programmatic changes that can make service provision more efficient and better for the farmworker community.” — Alexis J. Handal, PhD, MPH
Congratulations to Center Doctoral Student Lauren MacConnachie, MS, on her first publication as a lead author in Social Science & Medicine.
“Incarceration and housing insecurity represent severe and complex experiences of a multitude of psychosocial stressors, including discrimination, violence, and poverty. In this study, we investigated the association between incarceration and/or housing insecurity and advanced immune age in adults aged 55 and older.”
“Widespread exposure to toxins in heavy metals may have a big impact on health problems linked to earlier aging of the ovaries in middle-aged women, such as hot flashes, bone weakening and osteoporosis, higher chances of heart disease, and cognitive decline.”
Additional authors include lead author and Center Alumni Ning Ding, Center Core Faculty Xin Wang and John F Randolph, and Center Core Faculty and former Center Director Siobán D Harlow.
» Original study at the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Siobán Harlow, Center Core Faculty and former Center Director, has been honored by the creation of a named professorship after her. Effective December 1, 2023 and through November 30, 2025, Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, Department of Biostatistics Chair, is the Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health. Dr. Harlow is only the second woman in the history of the School of Public Health to have a professorship named after her.
“I recently applied and was accepted to the Women’s Health Medical Student Scholars Program, a choice inspired by my work with SWAN and women’s midlife science. This program offers an opportunity for medical students to participate in didactic, service, clinical and research experiences that center on women’s health. My project will likely be related to the intersection of public health and women’s health and access to care. I have found myself using many of the skills I gained from conversations with SWAN participants.”
» Learn more about the SWAN Study at the Center for Midlife Science
Initiated in 2013, MiLES is a newly established cohort study which creates and maintains the MiLES Longitudinal Cohort & Biobank, including lupus cases from the southeast Michigan surveillance registry as well as population-based controls.
The 34-year MBHMS follows the daughters of participants in the historic Tecumseh Community Health Study to evaluate the impact of aging-related processes including menopause and the secular increase in obesity on the development and progression of musculoskeletal disease and declines in physical functioning. This study addresses a significant gap in scientific knowledge that impedes our ability to optimize fracture prevention strategies. If our hypotheses prove correct, baseline external bone size may be used as an additional parameter to identify women most likely to lose bone strength rapidly during the MT and who might benefit from early intervention.
The SWAN Multi-Pollutant Study (MPS) was initiated in 2016 to examine health effects of multiple environmental chemical exposures, including perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), metals, phenols, phthalates, and organophosphate pesticide among midlife women. Funded through two R01 grants by the National Institute of Environmental Health and Sciences (NIEHS), the SWAN MPS specifically investigates 1) obesity, type-2 diabetes and related metabolic endpoints; and 2) reproductive health including sex steroid hormones, age at menopause and ovarian aging).