Background Information/Resources
Fertility Summit Summary (Excerpt from the February CHE Newsetter):
" A packed auditorium of over 400 leading scientists, physicians, nurses, patient and community group representatives, government agency officials and others came together for three intensive days at the highly successful 2007 University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) - CHE Summit on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility on January 28-30.
Colleagues gathered at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco to exchange the latest research around environmental contaminants and reproductive health, discuss how the science impacts public health, education, policy, and the health care system and explore mutual areas of collaboration among the diverse constituencies participating in the Summit.
Cutting-edge science permeated the Summit, including several presentations that demonstrated that low-level exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals like Diethylstilbestrol (DES) and Bisphenol-A may interfere with fetal development and cause health problems such as endometriosis, cancer, and infertility later in life. These health effects may be passed down to future generations so that even the grandchildren of those initially exposed may also be affected.
Many participants commented that they found the science and sense of shared purpose that came out of the Summit to be compelling and inspirational. Dr. Russell S. Kirby, Ph.D., MS, FACE, Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, called the Summit “a propitious beginning” and compared it to a 1970 Earth Day celebration that galvanized the entire Earth Day movement.
Under the outstanding leadership of Summit Co-Directors Alison Carlson, Facilitator of the CHE Fertility/Pregnancy Compromise Work Group, Dixie Horning, Executive Director of UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, Tracey Woodruff, Ph.D., Research Scientist at UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies (on sabbatical from US EPA), Summit Manager, Mary Wade, MJ, UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, and Summit Co-Chairs Linda Giudice, MD, Ph.D., M.Sc., Professor and Chair of UCSF’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, and Philip R. Lee, MD, Founding Chairman of CHE, and Chancellor and Professor (of Social Medicine) Emeritus at UCSF, the Summit highlighted the department’s newly-created Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), a venture that aims to model the principles of collaboration and integration of trans-disciplinary environmental reproductive health research with education, health care, and health advocacy (For more information about PRHE, please visit: http://www.ucsf.edu/coe/prhe.html).
CHE looks forward to a continued partnership with PRHE and UCSF, to expand on the building blocks set forth by the Summit, and to facilitate further collaboration among those interested in working on reproductive and environmental health. Published proceedings of the Summit will be available in the near future; CHE staff will insure that Partners are provided information on how to access these materials.
Please also join us for the upcoming CHE Partnership Call (February 26 @ 9am Pacific) that focus on highlights from the 2007 Fertility Summit. Please see below for more information about this call. "
