Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH)
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Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH)
The Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH—pronounced “BIRCH”) is a mentored career development program. It connects junior faculty, known as “BIRCWH Scholars,” to senior faculty with shared research interest in women’s health and sex differences research. Since the program was created in 2000, 63 grants to 39 institutions supporting more than 493 junior faculty have been awarded by ORWH and BIRCWH program co-sponsors.
About BIRCWH
The BIRCWH awards are a trans-NIH collaborative effort. The sixth and most current round of BIRCWH programs (FY 2012) is supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and the National Institute of Mental Health. ORWH and NIDA provide programmatic oversight for these BIRCWH programs and NICHD provides the grants management oversight for most of the programs.
Twenty-nine programs are currently active nationwide. To be eligible for the BIRCWH program, junior faculty--men and women--must have recently completed clinical training or postdoctoral fellowship, and plan to conduct interdisciplinary basic, translational, behavioral, clinical, and/or health services research relevant to women’s health. Most BIRCWH scholars move on to obtain independent NIH grant funding following their participation in the BIRCWH program.
- See photos of BIRCWH directors and BIRCWH scholars at the Ninth Annual Interdisciplinary Women’s Health Research Symposium
- NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health Announces New Awards to Support Interdisciplinary Research Careers of Junior Faculty in Women’s Health
BIRCWH Programs
- FY 2012 Programs and Principal Investigators
- FY 2010 Programs and Principal Investigators
- FY 2010 Program Abstracts
Additional Information
For more information about ORWH Interdisciplinary Initiatives, contact Joan D. Nagel, M.D., M.P.H., Program Director, Interdisciplinary Research Programs; Director, BIRCWH Program; Coordinator, Specialized Centers of Research on Sex and Gender Factors Affecting Women’s Health (SCOR); joan.nagel@nih.gov.
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