The Women in Global Health Research’s upcoming intensive course on Global Infectious Diseases Across a Woman’s Lifespan, capped off by their 10th annual Scientific Symposium, takes place May 19-22, with the final day—May 22—open to the Weill Cornell Medicine community, including students and trainees. All are welcome to register.
The selective four-day intensive course will include topics such as sex differences in global infectious diseases; host immunology across the woman's lifespan; and the treatment, prevention, and social determinants that contribute to poorer health outcomes for women. The May 22 scientific symposium will feature a keynote address by Dr. Carmen Logie, a pioneer in the field, and will feature a panel discussion with Dr. Lauren Osborne, Vice Chair of Clinical Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Dr. Dan Fitzgerald, Director of the Center for Global Health.
The expansion of the traditionally one-day event is supported in part by a key $2 million grant awarded last year to Drs. Jennifer Downs, Jyoti Mathad and Margaret “Molly” McNairy from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for an initiative on developing research leaders in women’s global infectious diseases. The undertaking employs a multi-pronged approach: (1) growing research around women’s infectious diseases, (2) supporting and mentoring the researchers producing these studies, and (3) increasing the number of researchers working to improve women’s health worldwide.
Sex is a critical and understudied variable in infectious diseases. This was underscored in a recent analysis in The Lancet HIV by a multinational team led by Dr. Downs, which emphasizes the importance of considering host sex when evaluating infectious diseases, and even further when analyzing interactions between two or more infectious diseases.
At equivalent viral loads, women with HIV infection will progress to AIDS faster than men with HIV. The parasite Schistosoma haematobium, a parasitic flatworm found in contaminated water, is associated with infertility and increased susceptibility to HIV infection in women due to its effects on the female genital tract. Schistosome infections affect approximately 250 million people worldwide. While approximately 90% of the world’s schistosome infections and 66% of the world’s 39 million HIV infections occur in Africa, the implications of this research—and its pivotal emphasis of ensuring that analysis by sex is included—are far-reaching. Understanding how sex, HIV, and schistosome infections interact to affect a person’s health is critical to providing the best possible care.
The findings, according to Dr. Downs, underscore two critical gaps in the study of women’s global infectious diseases: (1) understanding how these diseases, including HIV, tuberculosis and Covid-19, affect women, and (2) addressing the shortage of researchers focusing on this area. The new grant from NIAID provides five years of support and will address both these gaps by providing intensive education and mentorship to the next generation of leaders in women’s global infectious diseases.
Dr. Downs credits the Weill Cornell Center for Global Health, a compendium of Weill Cornell Medicine physician-scientists, including multiple faculty from the Weill Department of Medicine, for its pioneering support of building leadership in the area of global women’s health. “The opportunities for junior scientists at our locations in Tanzania, Lebanon, Haiti, and more are extraordinary,” Dr. Downs said. Physician-scientists like Dr. Sasha Fahme, an award-winning researcher, is currently studying the complex health challenges of Syrian women in Beirut, Lebanon.
“For so long, studies have not consistently included women, and perhaps as a result, our knowledge of how common illnesses can manifest has not been well-understood,” Dr. Downs said. “It’s our hope that initiatives like the course and symposium coming up in May will help us continue to make critical progress.”
The Weill Cornell Women in Global Health Research Initiative’s Women’s Infectious Diseases Global Scholars (WINGS) program, open to junior investigators, and applications for next year’s intensive course, will open again in fall 2025.