The “Center”, originally called the Center for Research on Women’s Health, was founded at the University of Florida in the late 1990’s to foster interdisciplinary and inter-professional research collaborations in Women’s Health. It was the first Center at the University of Florida not housed in a particular College, but rather encompassed a University wide collection of researchers across many disciplines.
The Center was renamed the Center for Research on Perinatal Outcomes and subsequently approved by the Florida Board of Governors. The change in Center name was intended to focus the vision of the Center on research that would lead to improved perinatal outcomes, although the original intent of interdisciplinary and inter-professional research collaborations across many fields of basic science, medicine, and social sciences was maintained. Collaborations for improving perinatal outcomes and subsequent child development, as well as increasing reproductive and lactational efficiency among large animals continues to include fundamental, translational and clinical research. Funding for the Center was initiated by the Dean of the College of Medicine and has subsequently continued through contributions of indirect cost allocations from grants of Principal Investigators in the Center.
The Center partners with the Reproductive and Perinatal Biology Research Program, which has been in existence for more than 40 years at the University of Florida. Together, they meet weekly during the academic year for a series of educational seminars, which includes participants from undergraduate programs, master level students and pre and postdoctoral students, as well as MDs, PhDs and DVMs from at UF and across the world.