The Centre for Cardiometabolic, Oncology, Diet and Exercise research in Women (CODE-W) aims to understand, treat, and improve the cardiometabolic health of women across the lifespan.
Overview
CODE-W is co-led by Amy Kirkham and Jenna Gillen, both assistant professors in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education. They are uniquely positioned within Canada to address critical gaps in women's health through the following distinct pillars:
Focus on Women
Dedicating research to the study of women is critical, because biological sex influences how every organ responds to treatment, and gender impacts one’s interaction with, access to, and uptake of healthcare. Despite this recognition for over 20 years, there remains a lack of clinical research specific to women, including for cardiometabolic disease pathophysiology, and exercise and nutrition interventions.
Many studies conducted within CODE-W focus exclusively on women in the understudied areas of cardiovascular, metabolic and muscle physiology, while others involve both sexes with a commitment to sex-segregated analyses and results to ensure that our research always moves the needle forward for women.
Multi-disciplinary approaches
Multidisciplinary approaches are necessary to address some of the most urgent contemporary health challenges. CODE-W leverages the complementary, but distinct expertise of Profs. Kirkham and Gillen and their collaborators and trainees that blurs traditional academic boundaries between exercise physiology, nutrition, rehabilitation sciences, oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and biomedical engineering.
State-of-the-art Facilities
Canadian Foundation for Innovation funding has enabled recent renovations, and extensive equipment purchases to enable comprehensive multi-system (cardiac, vascular, skeletal muscle, blood, adipose tissue) characterization and innovative non-pharmacological treatment of cardiometabolic dysfunction specific to women.
CODE-W is located in the award winning Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport at 100 Devonshire Place in downtown Toronto.
Quantitative Holism
CODE-W takes a quantitative holistic approach, which considers the person as a whole, while still utilizing quantitative methods to measure and analyze its components. This approach runs counter to the reductionist approach to medicine and research on chronic disease that focuses on individual biological systems and sees the person as a sum of their parts.
In contrast, CODE-W aims to study women holistically, by considering the integration between biological systems, lifestyle behaviors, quality of life, mental health, and social determinants of health, but exclusively with quantitative research methods.
Active Studies
- The Ms. FIT study is looking for women who are not currently physical active to participate in different forms of exercise with instructor support with or without a diet program with dietitian support for 6 months.
Participate in the Ms. FIT study - The Ms. FIT BC study is looking for women with a history of stage I, II, III hormone-positive postmenopausal breast cancer who are not currently physically active to participate in different forms of exercise with instructor support with or without a diet program with dietitian support for 6 months.
Participate in the Ms. FIT BC study - We are looking for female postmenopausal breast cancer survivors and male prostate cancer survivors who are not currently physically active to participate in an entirely remote study.
Participate in the physical activity and cancer study We are looking for recreationally active female and male participants to determine if metabolic and muscle physiology responses to a single session of exercise differ between sexes.
- We have upcoming studies involving nutrition or exercise interventions in the following populations:
- Men and women with or at risk for type 2 diabetes
- Women with stage I-III breast cancer who have previously received chemotherapy are aged 60+
- Women with stage I-III hormone-positive breast cancer have not received chemotherapy
- Women without a history of cancer, cardiovascular or metabolic disease
Eumenorrheic women between 18-35 years who currently participate in regular exercise training
If you would like to receive information about any of these upcoming studies, please email womenshealthstudy@utoronto.ca to express your interest.
