Celebrating National Women's History Month

In honor of National Women's History Month in March, we are celebrating Cedars-Sinai's talented female leaders. In this week's issue, we interview Sarah J. Kilpatrick, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Karen L. Reckamp, MD, MS, a lung cancer expert who is the director of the Division of Medical Oncology and associate director for Clinical Research at Cedars-Sinai Cancer.

Sarah J. Kilpatrick, MD, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Obstettrics and Gynecology

How are you making an impact on science?

Even though the U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among the world's wealthiest countries, the number of women who die is small. That makes it a hard issue to study and to understand what we need to do to improve. The team I worked with in Chicago before I came to Cedars-Sinai recognized that there are a lot more women who suffer severe maternal morbidity—they get really sick, but survive. So, we thought, "What if we figure out how to identify those women and study them to look for things that could have done been done better?”

Based on that thinking, we published a number of papers. We concluded that the most efficient method would be to look at pregnant or postpartum women who went to an ICU because they were so sick. We also looked at women who received four or more units of blood, which is a sign of hemorrhage, a big cause of bad pregnancy outcomes. We published data showing that these women had similar diagnoses as the women who died, and we published data on preventability. Our metric has been picked up nationally, and it’s used to encourage hospitals to review these cases. We helped start the trend of looking at preventability.

What leadership advice would you give to your younger self?

Take the time to develop professional relationships and understand the current status of things before you push for change, because to make change, you need people to work with you. I'm a very impatient person, and that works well in some settings. My personality is, I just want to get something done. I just want to fix it. But what I've learned over the years is that being a little more patient, and getting to know people and pulling them into your goals, will make the ultimate change better and more accepted.

Who is your favorite science heroine from history, and why?

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. I think is she is underappreciated. In 1849, she became the first woman to receive an M.D. degree from an American medical school. That's what people know and remember but, the reality is, that's just the first thing she did that was remarkable. It was very hard for her to get into a practice because no one trusted a woman physician. So she ultimately ended up renting a room in a house and started her own practice. Eight years after becoming a doctor, she started the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. It was the first hospital that was run completely by women. After that, she and two other women doctors started the first medical school for women, which was ultimately absorbed into New York University. The persistence and the resilience that she possessed to do all of that is pretty amazing and inspiring.

Karen L. Reckamp, MD, MS, director of the Division of Medical Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Cancer

How are you making an impact on science?

In three ways. The first relates to my work treating patients with lung cancer. Probably the biggest advancement for our patients is that we are treating lung cancers with precision medicine. This means bringing patients novel therapies that target specific genetic mutations in the tumor or activate the immune system, which help shrink the tumor and allow patients to live longer. I have been a part of developing these novel therapies over the past 15 years, and these advances have given patients, even those with advanced disease, the chance of longer-term survival with better quality of life throughout the journey. That was something we never saw at the beginning of my career. Some of my earliest work involved using dendritic cells to activate the immune system against cancer, and resulted in clinical trials to benefit patients with lung cancer.

Second, it's crucial to try to understand what causes lung cancer in the first place. Work that I have done, and collaborated on, has looked at the genetic factors that can be inherited—what we call germline genetics—which could help us predict who might be at risk for lung cancer. That's especially important in places like California, where we have a lower percentage of people who smoke, but where we're seeing more and more cases of nonsmokers with lung cancer.

The third piece is mentoring junior faculty and students—the next generation of scientists and physicians to go into the field—to encourage them to continue the research and improving outcomes for our patients.

What leadership advice would you give to your younger self?

If there isn't a clear path forward, develop your own path. We have very prescribed training from the minute we walk into medical school, and often through our residency and fellowship training. When you get your first job, often you're looking for some of that kind of guidance to tell you where to go next. Rather than waiting for that, if there's something you're passionate about—whether it's a research interest or another interest—sometimes you have to forge your own path. I worked in immunotherapy for lung cancer over a decade ago when it appeared that immunotherapy was not something that could be used effectively to help treat lung cancer. But now it’s the standard of care for our patients with lung cancer. So keep moving forward and believe in yourself.

Who is your favorite science heroine from history, and why?

One who comes to mind quickly is a physician-scientist named Janet Rowley. She worked at University of Chicago when I was a medical student there. Her work really paved the way for understanding genetic alterations that occur in tumors. That, in turn, helped lead to targeted therapy, first in patients with leukemia, and now in patients with lung cancer and with many other kinds of tumors. She was a pioneer.