UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health

Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment

Expanding Clinical Practice

PRHE is working to increase the capacity of health care providers to prevent preconception and prenatal exposures to environmental hazards and to promote prevention-oriented policies.

Current Projects

From Advancing Science to Ensuring Prevention (FASTEP)

The goal of the From Advancing Science to Ensuring Prevention (FASTEP) alliance is to secure each and everyone’s right to optimal reproductive health by fostering environments that prevent exposure to potential reproductive toxicants and provide the nutritive and social sustenance necessary for healthy pregnancies, children, adults, and future generations. FASTEP activities include:

Establish and Nurture the FASTEP Alliance. FASTEP Alliance partners include clinical and scientific experts and advocates in the fields of reproductive, occupational, environmental and pediatric medicine, public health, and toxicology, and represent academic, governmental and non-governmental organizations. The FASTEP Alliance will educate clinicians on environmental reproductive health topics and train them to promote prevention-oriented public policy.

Creating a science-based foundation for clinical care and health policy. A collaborative effort to vet, frame and synthesize the scientific evidence linking the environment and reproductive health into a series of white papers endorsed by key leaders in the field. In sharp contrast to typical scientific review processes - which review the literature and then almost always just offer priorities in the research area – the FASTEP white papers will provide solid scientific information combined with practical and policy advice. The FASTEP white papers will provide a foundation for creating and disseminating educational materials for clinicians, patients, the public, and policy makers by members of the FASTEP Alliance and others.

Harnessing the Role of Health Care Professionals. FASTEP partners are engaged in a wide range of efforts to educate health care professionals in order to transform emerging scientific discoveries about the role of the environment on reproductive health into healthy pregnancies, healthy children and the health of future generations.

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Postgraduate Course at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), November 10, 2008

Faculty from PRHE will lead and co-teach a postgraduate course at the 2008 ASRM Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The course is on Environmental Challenges to Female and Male Reproductive Health and Fertility, and will cover both fertility-related effects and effects from prenatal exposures to environmental contaminants.

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Shaping Our Legacy: Reproductive Health and the Environment

Shaping Our Legacy offers a nontechnical summary of the latest science on how exposure to chemicals may impair our reproductive health. It also outlines what we – as clinicians, health affected groups, policy makers, community activists, researchers and scientists – can do to create environments that are healthier for fertility and reproduction.

Learn more and download this report.

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Past Activities

UCSF-CHE Summit on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility

The Summit on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility was held January 28-30, 2007 and was co-sponsored by the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE). The goals of the Summit were:

To review the science linking environmental chemical exposures with reproductive health and fertility compromise, including effects on adult reproductive health that stem from exposures experienced in the womb; and
To discuss new research directions, clinical care approaches, educational tools and policy initiatives that could improve fertility, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive and developmental health.

Research presentations were complemented with discussions by health professionals, policy makers, government regulators, and patient, community, environmental and reproductive health advocates at work "on the ground." In addition, the over 400 participants from these fields collaborated to form a series of recommendations for advancing the field of environmental reproductive health.

Learn more

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