Higgins reflects on GWIMS/BIRCWH Women’s Health Research Mentorship Award
In late 2024, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health Group on Women in Medicine and Science (GWIMS) presented awards at the annual GWIMS Women in Medicine and Science Leadership Conference. Jenny Higgins, PhD, MPH, director of the Division of Reproductive and Population Health and the UW Collaborative for Reproductive Equity, received the GWIMS and Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRWCH) Women’s Health Research Mentorship Award.
The GWIMS/BIRCWH Women’s Health Research Mentorship Award recognizes impactful mentorship of women scientists fostering successful careers in women’s health and sex/gender differences research. The award is co-sponsored by the UW BIRCWH Program. Higgins shared reflections on what the mentorship award means to her.
What does receiving this award mean to you?
Receiving this award helps me feel that some of the aspects of my day-to-day work were just rendered a little more visible. I don’t go into a conversation with a trainee or a junior colleague thinking, “okay, now I’m going to be a mentor”, I’m just going to talk with my colleague. So this award highlights the critical work and the critical ways we support our colleagues. I was really touched to receive it.
What inspired you to take on mentorship roles in your career?
I didn’t specifically set out to take on a mentorship role. But I have always believed that showing up for trainees and junior colleagues is a good use of our time. Even just offering presence, compassion, and someone who sees their humanness as opposed to their ability to be good workers, good researchers or scientists, good physicians – it feels really great to be recognized as a person, so I try to show up compassionately for people I work with and people I interact with.
Who inspired you as a mentor or helped shape your career?
I have been so touched by so many mentors, and I hope I have integrated some of their superpowers into my own work with colleagues. I had mentors during my doctoral work who were so patient as I was learning – they made it seem like there was nowhere they would rather be than sitting with me, reviewing data.
Some of the best mentors were ones who were genuinely energized by trainees’ ideas. For me, they really fanned the flames of my ideas versus tried to put fences around them. And as a cautious person, I am very grateful for the encouragement and fan-flaming that I really needed.
If you have ever been to the Ebling Library in the Health Sciences Learning Center, there’s a picture on the wall as you walk in of Dr. Paul Ebling with a little homage to him. It says something like, “Some people walk into a room and say, ‘Here I am.’ Dr. Ebling walked into a room and said, ‘There you are.’” I want to be a mentor who walks in and sees you, your hopes and dreams as well as your values and challenges. Really good mentoring is all about seeing someone else and supporting them. I get so much inspiration from that quote about Dr. Ebling, even though I’ve never met him.
Why is mentorship so crucial in academic medicine, ob-gyn and reproductive health?
There are a lot of unwritten rules in academic medicine. These rules aren’t necessarily immediately obvious to scholars from different backgrounds. Mentoring and mentorship is important to help make those unwritten rules more manifest for scholars at all levels and support them through their careers.
In some ways, ob-gyn and reproductive health is such an easy field to be a mentor in – people come to this field because they are really passionate about birthing folks and reproductive health, and how to make sure folks can move through the world with reproductive autonomy. What a delight to get to work with mentees who share my passion, or bring their own passion for this work.
At this moment in particular, it’s hard to feel like we can completely live our values at work. Sometimes this can be a field where having passion also leads to real heartbreak – we have these passions, these values, but they are not always matched at the policy level or cultural level. I am always working with myself as well as with mentees on how to hold those passions, but also get out of bed in the morning and be able to persevere even when you feel as if your own values aren’t being reflected in the policies and systems around you.
What is the importance of mentorship in reproductive health research?
I think there is tremendous value in reproductive equity research to help make the world a better place for birthing people. Being able to walk alongside colleagues and trainees on their research journeys is exciting and hopeful. We need all sorts of efforts to advance equity, and research is one very important component of that. Good research, good science are critical pieces of how to improve people’s reproductive equity, reproductive health, and wellbeing.