Empowering the next generation of sexual and reproductive health researchers.

Sexual and reproductive health is best served by interdisciplinary, research-informed clinical care. The goal of the IRIS (Interprofessional Research In Sexual & Reproductive Health) Academy is to assist in the development of the workforce of researchers working to inform interprofessional care, by engaging clinical and research trainees to collaborate on filling critical knowledge gaps in the areas of sexual and reproductive wellness.

Reproductive and sexual health (RSH) is critical for physical and mental health, and yet many healthcare professionals are ill-prepared to discuss, evaluate, and treat these concerns. In part due to stigma and shame, RSH literacy is low for students entering health professional training, and limited and inconsistent graduate curricula fail to prepare learners to address RSH. Lack of RSH content across graduate curricula stunts curiosity on these topics, leading to outstanding research gaps on critical topics. Even in populations that have unique RSH needs and interprofessional care teams (such as cancer survivors or individuals with intellectual and development disorders), research shows that their clinical teams are unprepared to address RSH. Interprofessional research has the potential to examine under-appreciated relationships between RSH and mental and physical health, particularly in these populations.

Best practices for translational research recommend an interdisciplinary, interprofessional approach with the inclusion of community members at every stage of the research development process. A robust community-engaged interprofessional workforce of clinicians and researchers is critically needed to improve care for individuals with RSH needs. Despite this, interprofessional education is limited and has implementation challenges.

To address these needs, we have developed a longitudinal extracurricular research training program to prepare interprofessional graduate students to apply foundational research methods to questions that arise during their clinical training and encourage them to collaborate to develop research proposals that will improve the quality of care delivered to individuals with RSH concerns: The IRIS (Interprofessional Research In Sexual & Reproductive Health) Academy.