Center for Women’s Health Research and K12 Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers Announcing New Leadership

The Center for Women’s Health Research (CWHR) and the K12 Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Program are excited to announce the newest addition to our leadership team: Kristen Mark, PhD, MPH. 

As of January 2024, we welcomed Kristen Mark, PhD, MPH, as the director for the Center for Women’s Health Research. In this role, she also serves as a Co-Principal Investigator of the UMN K12 BIRCWH grant. Dr. Mark is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and the Joycelyn Elders Endowed Chair in Sexual Health Education at the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, where she is the Director of Education. She is a sex and relationship researcher, educator, and therapist with an interdisciplinary training background. Her research centers around sexual well-being, sexual function, global sexual and reproductive health, and integrating positive approaches to inclusive, comprehensive sexual health education across the lifespan. Dr. Mark has extensive experience conducting foundation and institute-funded research and growing expertise in NIH research funding as PI or Co-I. She currently holds an R01 from NICHD as PI on a clinical trial to create and test the efficacy of curriculum for healthcare workers in addressing sexual and reproductive health needs of people with disabilities in Tanzania. She brings particular expertise in research curriculum mentoring. She holds accolades such as the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH) Outstanding Research Award of 2020 and the University of Minnesota Medical School Center for Women in Medicine and Science Women as Medical Educators Award in 2021. In her new roles with the CWHR and BIRCWH, she will lead the strategic priorities of the Center as well as collaborate with K12 BIRCWH Co-PIs to ensure sustainable success for the program.

The Center For Women's Health Research (CWHR) is an interdisciplinary Center housing research career development and training programs centered around advancing women’s health and sex/gender differences research at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. The Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (UMN BIRCWH program) is our flagship career development program funded through an internal K12 grant mechanism, awarded to the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women’s Health. It fosters mentored research career development of junior faculty of any gender who are engaged in interdisciplinary women’s health or sex differences research from across the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. This training program aims to place junior investigators on the path to being competitive for NIH-independent K- or R- awards. Success of the program is judged by the number of trainees who go on to secure independent NIH K-awards and NIH R21 grants in the short term, and NIH R01, and R01 equivalent funding in the long term, for women’s health or sex differences research. The current Co-Principal Investigators include Sharon Allen, MD, PhD (Corresponding PI, Co-Program Director), Bharat Thyagarajan, MD, PhD, MPH ( Co-Research Director), and Kristen Mark, PhD, MPH (Co-Program Director, Co-Research Director).