Expert on women’s health issues is honored for leadership

Carolyn M. Mazure, Ph.D., associate dean for faculty affairs, professor of psychiatry and of psychology and director of Women’s Health Research at Yale (WHRY), has received the 2007 Marion Spencer Fay Award, which honors a distinguished woman physician or scientist whose national leadership has had a major impact on research and the application of science to health care.

The award recognizes Mazure’s accomplishments as the head of WHRY, an innovative program that spearheads new investigations in women’s health, and for her own research contributions in the field of depression.

“Professor Mazure is an outstanding national leader in women’s health research, and has pioneered the integration of science, educational outreach and policy development in this field,” says Dean Robert J. Alpern, M.D. Carolyn Mazure The National Board for Women in Medicine established the award in 1963 in honor of Marion Spencer Fay, the dean and president of Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, now Drexel University College of Medicine (DUCM) from 1946 to 1963.

Today the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership at DUCM, which addresses health issues of women and promotes women in medical education, oversees the award selection. Lynn Yeakel, the Betty A. Cohen Chair in Women’s Health and director of the institute, presented the award to Mazure in Philadelphia on December 6.

Past winners of the Marion Spencer Fay Award include Mary-Claire King, Ph.D., professor of genome sciences and of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who is best known for identifying important genes involved in breast cancer, and Catherine D. DeAngelis, M.D., the first woman to be appointed editor of JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association.