Women and adolescents in Puerto Rico face significant challenges to their mental and physical health, including limited access to gynecologic/reproductive healthcare, pervasive stigmas, and the ongoing impacts of natural disasters. The WHD addresses these challenges through research, education, and community outreach programs.

The Women’s Health Division (WHD) at Ponce Research Institute (PRI) investigates conditions affecting women, including endometriosis, pelvic pain, gynecologic cancers, plus menstrual, gastrointestinal, and mental health disorders. WHD’s work spans molecular/genetic, translational, behavioral, biobanking, clinical trials, and community-based participatory research with a focus on reducing women’s health disparities. Our team brings decades of experience in groundbreaking research on women’s health, community-based participatory research and graduate-level education in biomedical sciences enabling innovative solutions and impactful results. Collectively, we have secured $180M (past 6 yrs) in funding, published in peer-reviewed journals, and obtained patents, advancing the understanding and management of conditions predominantly affecting women. WHD serves the communities of southern/central Puerto Rico (~485,000 population) with significant health and social vulnerabilities. Structural challenges, high poverty rates (43.5% vs 10.5% in the US), physician exodus, and natural disasters (hurricanes and earthquakes) exacerbate health issues, leaving the region with limited gynecologic/reproductive care. WHD’s community outreach and research programs include: a mobile clinic that improves access to preventive screenings (mammograms, Pap smears) and provides patient navigation in rural communities; clinical research units that improves women’s care through access to clinical trials; a community training institute that has empowered hundreds of community leaders (88% women) through health research education; psycho-oncology programs that provide mental health support to women with breast and ovarian cancer during treatment and survivorship; and an endometriosis research program that has identified new diagnostic and therapeutic targets through pre-clinical and clinical trials, and uncovered the high prevalence of menstrual disorders and distress in teens across Puerto Rico.

Ponce Research Institute’s Women’s Health Division (WHD) conducts women’s health-focused research impacting the population of South/Central Puerto Rico including molecular/translational, behavioral, and community-based participatory research. Informed by its research, multidisciplinary teams work towards reducing improving overall health conditions in the communities we serve. WHD’s community outreach efforts have significantly impacted health outcomes by providing free screenings and patient navigation services, direct healthcare interventions, and natural disaster relief through its mobile clinic. WHD’s clinical research programs have served hundreds of participants  of all demographics in pharma-sponsored studies. Through various NIH-funded programs (U54CA163071, U54MD007579) our researchers have equipped community leaders with the skills to engage actively in health research and promotion. Funded research programs have uncovered critical health constraints (1-5), including those exacerbated by natural disasters and pandemics (6-9), identified modulators of mental health (10-14), implemented health education programs to address low literacy (15,16), and developed psychosocial interventions for  endometriosis patients (18,19) and with breast and ovarian cancer (4). WHD researchers have documented high rates of high-risk Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) genotypes (20) and of menstrual conditions and emotional distress in a cohort of 1000+ adolescents across Puerto Rico, including severe dysmenorrhea and cycle irregularities, along with significant gaps in menstrual health education (21). WHD’s multidisciplinary team’s community engagement approach actively develops tailored, evidence-based solutions to improve health outcomes and increase quality of life for women in our communities, while shaping future research to address persistent regional health issues.