Over the last 10 years, his research projects have focused on the epidemiologic study of pregnancy complications (e.g., anemia in pregnancy, pregnancy-induced hypertension or preeclampsia, gestational diabetes mellitus), adverse birth outcomes (e.g., fetal growth restriction, preterm birth, low birth weight). He has been as PI and Co-PI for several national and international research projects on the determinants of poor pregnancy and birth outcomes.

Interdisciplinary Research

Being male or female is an important fundamental variable in designing and analyzing basic and clinical research.  Historically, the term “sex and gender” have been loosely, and in some cases – inappropriately used in reporting research results, placing emphasis on the important need for further study.

Excerpt from the NIH Agenda for Research on Women’s Health for the 21st Century.

The differences to be discovered between men and women in health and disease are not deficits, but provide avenues for new analysis and treatment interventions tailored to the group, the individual and the circumstances.

Women and men are obviously different in regard to the presence of hormones.  It is vital that investigators determine under what conditions sex and gender differences manifest and design clinical studies appropriately to examine these situations.

The Sex and Gender Distinction

To understand the tenets of the sex and gender debate and its effects on current concerns in women’s health, one must first review the origins of the lexicon itself.  The original distinction between “sex” and “gender” emerged in the mid-20th century. Feminist (and other) scholars distinguished between those qualities conventionally attributed to biologically based differences about a person’s “sex,” male or female, and those qualities that were understood as a result of cultural and social processes that constitute a person as man or woman” one’s “gender”.

The distinction was one part of the challenge to the dominant beliefs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which held that difference was biologically determined and that women’s constitutions were more biologically driven than those of men.  A similar challenge was made to the notions of biologically determined racial characteristics attributed to African Americans and others, which allegedly accounted for differences in affect, intelligence, and economic status. During the past 25 years, use of the sex and gender distinction and lexicon has been fairly widespread throughout both the social sciences and the humanities. In fact, more often than not, “gender” is used in these fields to describe differences between men and women to emphasize the idea that differences cannot merely be attributed to biological or physiological processes, bur rather are almost always influenced by cultural, social, and historical contexts.

Women’s Health is a particularly pertinent issue.  Louisiana ranked last in the nation on all Women’s Health indicators. Louisiana’s distinctive social and cultural environment surely contributes to Women’s Health problems. The state has one of the least desirable reputations in the nation for behavioral excesses such as food and drink, as well as other behavioral, psychosocial, and health indicators such as substance abuse, crime, violence, poverty, low literacy and premature morbidity and mortality. In general, Women’s Health is peppered with areas where knowledge is scarce or incomplete.