Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is the recipient of a $1 million endowment from The Broad Foundation to fund a women’s heart research fellowship within its Women’s Heart Center.
The Edythe L. Broad Cardiology Research Fellowship will be directed by C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., an internationally recognized cardiologist specializing in heart disease in women. According to Bairey Merz, scientists selected for the one-year fellowship will study coronary microvascular function as well as a variety of other women’s heart disease research topics.
Microvascular coronary artery disease affects the small arteries found throughout the heart, reducing their ability to maintain the oxygen needed by the heart muscle to function properly. It affects nearly four times as many women as men – an estimated two to three million women in the U.S. – and often evades detection through traditional diagnostic techniques. In light of this, Cedars-Sinai’s Women’s Heart Center is focusing its expertise on diagnosing and reducing heart disease through a preventive approach that includes state-of-the-art screening and diagnostic testing.
In addition to serving as medical director of Cedars-Sinai’s Women’s Health Program, Women’s Heart Center, and of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center, Bairey Merz chairs a multi-center, long-term investigation of ischemic heart disease in women sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. She is also the Women’s Guild Chair in Women’s Health at Cedars-Sinai.
The Broad Foundation is headquartered in Los Angeles and supports urban K-12 public education, scientific and medical research and the arts. Its scientific and medical research initiatives are targeted at improving lives by accelerating and facilitating innovative biomedical research
