On Women's Health Research Day in 2022, Tuesday, January 25th, 2022, from 10:00 to 11:30 am (Pacific Time), La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and Women's Health Access Matters (WHAM) co-hosted an expert panel interactive discussion exploring sex-based differences in the immune system and autoimmune disease.
The Zoom discussion featured several subject-matter experts, including Lead Presenters Carolee Lee, WHAM Founder and Chief Executive Officer and LJI Board Director, and Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., LJI President, Chief Executive Officer, and Professor. RAND Corporation Senior Behavioral Scientist Lori Frank, Ph.D. and LJI Board Chair Gail K. Naughton, Ph.D., MBA will also join as Panelists.
In this live panel interactive discussion, experts Carolee Lee and Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire announced LJI's partnership with WHAM, which will broadly impact medical research by bolstering the efforts of the Institute, a globally top ranked research leader, to focus research on sex-based differences in disease.
Carolee Lee also introduced The WHAM Report and it's just-published findings on the significant economic impacts of increasing investments in research focused on women and autoimmune disease, specifically rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Lori Frank shared more of the detailed findings from The WHAM Report studies, as one of the lead authors of this groundbreaking report.
Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire then provided an overview of the current landscape of this research terrain, identifying persistent gaps and highlighting related research efforts underway at the Institute and beyond. Dr. Gail K. Naughton brought the conversation full circle by sharing her personal connections to this specific area of research, as well as her perspectives as the Founder and longtime executive at regenerative medicine company Histogen, Inc. and as the former Dean of the College of Business Administration at San Diego State University.
The discussion culminated with a lively panelist Question & Answer segment, which was opened to all registrants that joined live.
Women's Health Research Day
On January 25, 2016, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented a first of its kind policy requiring researchers to consider sex as a critical biological variable in federally funded research. This policy formally recognizes the value of sex-based biomedical research and acknowledges the need for more inclusive and more accurate research studies with participation by women and people of color, to thus mirror the demographics of the broader population and provide more precise research data.
Learn More
Learn more about La Jolla Institute's research focused on sex-based differences in autoimmune disease and disease broadly at:
lji.org/understanding-autoimmune-disease
Learn more about WHAM and The WHAM Report at:
thewhamreport.org
