Allen James Wilcox is an American epidemiologist who heads the reproductive epidemiology group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
Allen James Wilcox is an American epidemiologist who heads the reproductive epidemiology group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
Wilcox received his BA degree from the University of Michigan in 1968 and his MD from the University of Michigan Health System in 1973. He later received both his MPH and PhD from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health (formerly known as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health) in 1976 and 1979, respectively. [1]
Wilcox began working at the NIEHS in 1979, where he helped establish their epidemiology branch and served as its chief from 1991 to 2001. He became a senior investigator at the NIEHS's epidemiology branch in 2001. [1]
Wilcox's research falls into three categories: fertility and pregnancy, the use of birth weight and preterm delivery in perinatal research, and fetal development and child health. [2] In 1988, he published a study that found that 31% of pregnancies ended in miscarriages, [3] and in 1994, he published a study that found a strong link between the environment in which people live and work and the risk of birth defects in their children. [4] In 1995, he published a study that found that women had the best chance of conceiving a child if they had sex on the day of ovulation, with the odds of conception falling sharply thereafter. The same study found that the period during which women had the highest chance of conceiving lasted six days, including the five days before ovulation and the day of the ovulation itself. [5] [6]
Wilcox has served as the president of the American Epidemiological Society, the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research, and the Society for Epidemiologic Research. He received an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Bergen in 2008. [7]
Wilcox has been the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Epidemiology since 2001. [7]
Fertility awareness (FA) refers to a set of practices used to determine the fertile and infertile phases of a woman's menstrual cycle. Fertility awareness methods may be used to avoid pregnancy, to achieve pregnancy, or as a way to monitor gynecological health.
Calendar-based methods are various methods of estimating a woman's likelihood of fertility, based on a record of the length of previous menstrual cycles. Various methods are known as the Knaus–Ogino method and the rhythm method. The standard days method is also considered a calendar-based method, because when using it, a woman tracks the days of her menstrual cycle without observing her physical fertility signs. The standard days method is based on a fixed formula taking into consideration the timing of ovulation, the functional life of the sperm and the ovum, and the resulting likelihood of pregnancy on particular days of the menstrual cycle. These methods may be used to achieve pregnancy by timing unprotected intercourse for days identified as fertile, or to avoid pregnancy by avoiding unprotected intercourse during fertile days.
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation where an egg is combined with sperm in vitro. The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman's ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova from their ovaries and letting a man's sperm fertilise them in a culture medium in a laboratory. After the fertilised egg (zygote) undergoes embryo culture for 2–6 days, it is transferred by catheter into the uterus, with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy.
Miscarriage, also known in medical terms as a spontaneous abortion, is the death and expulsion of an embryo or fetus before it can survive independently. The term miscarriage is sometimes used to refer to all forms of pregnancy loss and pregnancy with abortive outcomes before 20 weeks of gestation.
Ovulation is the release of eggs from the ovaries. In women, this event occurs when the ovarian follicles rupture and release the secondary oocyte ovarian cells. After ovulation, during the luteal phase, the egg will be available to be fertilized by sperm. In addition, the uterine lining (endometrium) is thickened to be able to receive a fertilized egg. If no conception occurs, the uterine lining as well as the egg will be shed during menstruation.
Infertility is the inability of an animal or plant to reproduce by natural means. It is usually not the natural state of a healthy adult, except notably among certain eusocial species. It is the normal state of a human child or other young offspring, because they have not undergone puberty, which is the body's start of reproductive capacity.
Stillbirth is typically defined as fetal death at or after 20 or 28 weeks of pregnancy, depending on the source. It results in a baby born without signs of life. A stillbirth can often result in the feeling of guilt or grief in the mother. The term is in contrast to miscarriage, which is an early pregnancy loss, and sudden infant death syndrome, where the baby dies a short time after being born alive.
Fertility in colloquial terms refers the ability to have offspring. In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to reproduce, which is termed fecundity. The fertility rate is the average number of children born during an individual's lifetime. In medicine, fertility refers to the ability to have children, and infertility refers to difficulty in reproducing naturally. In general, infertility or subfertility in humans is defined as not being able to conceive a child after one year of unprotected sex. The antithesis of fertility is infertility, while the antithesis of fecundity is sterility.
The Billings ovulation method is a method in which women use their vaginal mucus to determine their fertility. It does not rely on the presence of ovulation, rather it identifies patterns of potential fertility and obvious infertility within the cycle, whatever its length. Effectiveness, however, is not very clear.
Prenatal development involves the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization, in the germinal stage of embryonic development, and continues in fetal development until birth.
The Creighton Model FertilityCare System is a form of natural family planning which involves identifying the fertile period during a woman's menstrual cycle. The Creighton Model was developed by Thomas Hilgers, the founder and director of the Pope Paul VI Institute. This model, like the Billings ovulation method, is based on observations of cervical mucus to track fertility. Creighton can be used for both avoiding pregnancy and achieving pregnancy.
Controversy over the beginning of pregnancy occurs in different contexts, particularly as it is discussed within the debate of abortion in the United States. Because an abortion is defined as ending an established pregnancy, rather than as destroying a fertilized egg, depending on when pregnancy is considered to begin, some methods of birth control as well as some methods of infertility treatment might be classified as causing abortions.
Pregnancy rate is the success rate for getting pregnant. It is the percentage of all attempts that leads to pregnancy, with attempts generally referring to menstrual cycles where insemination or any artificial equivalent is used, which may be simple artificial insemination (AI) or AI with additional in vitro fertilization (IVF).
David A. Savitz is a professor of Community Health in the Epidemiology Section of the Program in Public Health, Vice President for Research, and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at The Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and Associate Director for Perinatal Research in The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Women & Infants Hospital, both in Providence, Rhode Island. Savitz is the author of Interpreting epidemiologic evidence: strategies for study design and analysis (ISBN 0-19-510840-X) and more than 275 peer-reviewed articles. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2007.
Infertility in polycystic ovary disease (PCOS) is a hormonal imbalance in women that is thought to be one of the leading causes of female infertility. Polycystic ovary syndrome causes more than 75% of cases of anovulatory infertility.
Michael B. Bracken is an American perinatal epidemiologist. He is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, and Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, and Professor of Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine. He is co-director of the Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology.
Amos Grunebaum is an American obstetrician and gynecologist. He serves as Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Zucker School of Medicine, as Professor Emeritus at the medical school Weill Cornell Medicine, and as a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine and high-risk pregnancies. He is also the founder of Babymed.com, which is a website for pregnant women and those trying to conceive, the site is up since 2000.
Lauren Anne Wise is a Canadian-American epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health.
Donna Day Baird is an American epidemiologist and evolutionary-population biologist. She is a senior investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She is known for her research in reproductive health through NIEHS.
Germaine M. Buck Louis was the Dean of the George Mason University College of Health and Human Services and professor in Mason’s Department of Global and Community Health. She led the College in becoming Virginia's first accredited College of Public Health prior to her retirement in 2022. Her expertise focuses on environmental exposures and human health, particularly human reproduction and pregnancy. Prior to her appointment as dean at George Mason in 2017, she was the founding Director for the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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