Hadine Joffe

Hadine Joffe MD MSc is the Paula A. Johnson Endowed Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School and the Executive Director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology as well as the Executive Vice Chair for Academic and Faculty Affairs in the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she directs the Women’s Hormones and Aging Research Program.

Dr. Joffe received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, her medical degree from Cornell University Medical College, and her Master’s Degree in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her psychiatry residency training at McLean Hospital and a fellowship in Reproductive Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Joffe is an experienced clinician and clinical reproductive neuroscientist in the field of women’s aging health and women’s mental health. Her research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2000, as well as by foundations and pharmaceutical companies. Her work has focused on the mechanisms (neural, hormonal, and autonomic), course, and treatment of menopausal neuropsychological symptoms (hot flashes, insomnia, depression, and fatigue) in healthy midlife women and breast cancer survivors. She has recently extended this work to investigate the impact of menopause-related sleep disruption on body fat gain and the neural networks that link stress to common neuropsychological symptoms of menopause. This work has been supported by a series of R01s and a U54 Center grant from the National Institutes of Health.

As the Director of the Connors Center, she oversees a research program with two main pillars — equity in the development of novel therapeutics and the role of stress on the health of women. She has launched the First.In.Women Precision Medicine Platform to ensure that women benefit equally in the development of novel therapeutics. First.In.Women stimulates medical research and partners across the bioscience ecosystem to advance sex-specific and sex-differentiating knowledge in treating diseases that are exclusive, predominate, or differential in women. As part of First.In.Women, Dr. Joffe supports junior faculty and trainees through pilot IGNITE Awards and fellowships. To advance stress research, she has developed the Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Stress Program of Research (WHISPR), a pilot award program which lay the foundation for the NIH U54 Center grant (Reproductive Outcomes of Stress and Aging) through the SCORE (Specialized Centers of Research Excellence on Sex Differences) mechanism at NIH. Connors Center stimulates cross-departmental collaboration and incubates projects led by the next generation of investigators focused on sex/gender medicine.

Her contributions to research in women’s health have been recognized through the Thomas Clarkson Outstanding Clinical & Basic Science Research Award from the North American Menopause Society, and her commitment to mentorship has been recognized through the Stuart T. Hauser MD PhD Mentorship Award in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.