PROVIDENCE – Women & Infants Hospital and Brown University have chosen Dr. Joanna M. Cain, a specialist in gynecologic cancers who helped develop a national curriculum in women’s health for U.S. medical schools, to become chief of obstetrics and gynecology at the hospital and chair of the ob/gyn department at The Warren Alpert Medical School, effective Oct. 1.
Cain will succeed Dr. Donald R. Coustan, who is retiring after holding the posts for 17 years. She will also succeed Coustan as the Chace/Joukowsky Professor at Brown and as chief of gynecology-obstetrics at Rhode Island Hospital.
In addition, Cain will be Brown’s new assistant dean for women’s health programs.
“Dr. Cain is an internationally recognized leader in women’s health,” said Constance A. Howes, president and CEO of Women & Infants, in a news release. “She is extremely involved in academic medicine and is interested in resolving ethical issues in medicine. We are thrilled she has accepted our offer to come here.”
Cain is now chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Sciences University and director of the OHSU Center for Women’s Health, which has been a National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health since 2001. She earned her medical degree at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., completed her ob/gyn residency at the University of Washington and was the first woman to complete subspecialty training in gynecologic oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Equally noteworthy, Women & Infants and Brown said, is Cain’s personal background and what she has made of it. She grew up on an Indian reservation in a rural, farming community in Washington state, and there she developed a passion for meeting women’s health care needs, wherever they live. She developed and led the first national conference on the status of women’s health in rural United States and has committed herself to education and research, focusing especially on preventive strategies for gynecologic cancers, medical ethics issues in women’s health, and curricular development for women’s health.
“I am interested in creating healthy futures for women and children throughout the world,” she said. “Through unique research exploring maternal-fetal correlates of lifelong disease for mother and child, and gender-based research for all ages and conditions of women’s lives, we are creating new treatments and patterns for care for women of all ages. We are also teaching the generations of health professionals who will improve the health of both women and children throughout the world.”
Cain was the first woman and first American to chair the International Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology (FIGO) Committee for Ethics in Women’s Health, the only international committee of its kind, and she chairs FIGO’s Committee for International Cervical Cancer Prevention. She was the first woman president of the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics and is past president of the Council of University Chairs of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Eli Adashi, dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown, said the school is “fortunate” to have recruited “a physician, scholar, and advocate of Dr. Cain’s stature” to succeed Coustan. “We have every confidence that Dr. Cain will build wisely and energetically on the base of excellence that distinguishes this proud department,” he said.
In the news release, Cain said she sees her move east as an opportunity “to really expand and develop the model of the very best care that women can possibly have, on a national and international level.”
Women & Infants Hospital is the primary teaching affiliate of the Warren Alpert Medical School for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics and houses the seventh-largest obstetrical service in the country, with more than 9,000 deliveries per year. For more information, go to www.womenandinfants.org.
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