Director
Contact: 312-413-3785 | [email protected]

Stacie Geller, Ph.D. is G. William Arends Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Professor, Division of Academic internal Medicine, Department of Medicine at the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine. She is the Director of the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender and the National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. In her role as director of two UIC centers, she promotes collaborative multidisciplinary work related to women’s lives. Dr. Geller is a health services researcher and epidemiologist with expertise in women’s health, complementary and alternative medicine, and maternal mortality and morbidity. She has been the principal or co-investigator on over 25 funded research projects and has been the PI on 2 R01s. Dr. Geller has over 65 peer reviewed publications, 50 as first or senior author. Dr. Geller has conducted research related to maternal mortality and morbidity since 1999. As PI of a CDC/ASPH cooperative agreement to investigate factors associated with maternal mortality, she developed an innovative model for early identification of high-risk women that has been used nationally and internationally. Dr. Geller is a founding and continuing member of the Illinois Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which is responsible for review of preventability issues for all maternal deaths in the state. Dr. Geller’s international work in maternal mortality and morbidity began with a 5-year NICHD-funded randomized clinical trial comparing the use of oral misoprostol for prevention of postpartum hemorrhage in rural India. She is currently funded by Gynuity Health Projects and the Gates Foundation to conduct another community-based trial in rural India to compare two dosing strategies for the use of misoprostol to prevent postpartum hemorrhage. Dr. Geller is also collaborating with the MacArthur Foundation, the Millennium Villages Project and Pathfinder International to implement a continuum of care model to reduce PPH in India, Nigeria, and Ghana. She is currently mentoring several women’s health faculty members from UIC and Northwestern University who have interests in global women’s health.

Dr. Geller has been actively involved in leadership and mentoring activities for women and under-represented minorities on the UIC campus. Under her leadership, the UIC Women in Science and Engineering program received the 2011 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring from President Obama and the National Science Foundation. In recognition of her leadership and mentoring Dr. Geller received the 2010 Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Women’s Woman of the Year award.

In the past five years, Dr. Geller has mentored more than 20 junior faculty members, clinical postdoctoral fellows and PhD candidates. Prior to the UIC BIRCWH program’s funding, she (along with Dr. Hughes) established the Interdisciplinary Women’s Health Research (IWHR) program to provide senior faculty support to junior faculty interested in women’s health research. This program provided the opportunity for junior faculty scholars to be advised by an interdisciplinary group of senior women’s health research faculty and paired with two senior faculty mentors. Mentoring activities focused on developing research skills such as proposal development, methodology, preparation of materials for publication and presentation, and funding. Dr. Geller also serves on the advisory board for the CCTS REACH Mentoring Academy.

Dr. Geller’s leadership in women’s global health research was recognized in an invitation to present to the United Nations Commission on Population and Development in 2009. More recently, she was installed as Development Queen Mother of the Manso Nkwanta Traditional Area in Ghana by the Queen Mother and King of Manso Nkwanta to work toward the improvement of the education for women and girls and reducing teenage pregnancy.

PUBLICATIONS

Original Research (Peer-Reviewed)

Geller SE, Koch AR, Martin NJ, Prentice P, Rosenberg D. Comparing two review processes for determination of preventability of maternal mortality in Illinois. Matern Child Health J. In Press.

Raghavan S, Geller S, Miller S, Goudar S, Anger S, Yadavannavar M, Dabash R, Bidri S, Gudadinni M, Udgiri R, Koch A, Bellad MB, Winikoff B. Misoprostol for primary versus secondary prevention of postpartum haemorrhage: a cluster-randomized non-inferiority community trial. BJOG. In press.

MacDonald EJ, Lawton B, Geller SE. Contraception post severe maternal morbidity: a retrospective audit. 2015. doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2015.05.012. (Epub ahead of print).

Lal A, Geller S, Scott S, Hibbard JU. Assessment of Hospital Readiness for Obstetric Hemorrhage. Evidence Based Women’s Health Journal. In press.

Wong CA, Scott S, Jones RL, Walzer J, Geller S. The state of Illinois obstetric hemorrhage project: pre-project and post-training examination scores. J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med. 2015 Mar 31:1-5.

Zimmermann K, Khare MM, Wright C, Hasler A, Kerch S, Moehring P, Geller SE. Application of a gender-based approach to conducting a community health assessment for rural women in Southern Illinois. Eval Program Plann. 2015 Aug;51:27-34.

Zimmermann K, Khare MM, Koch A, Wright C, Geller SE. Training intervention study participants to disseminate health messages to the community: a new model for translation of clinical research to the community. Clin Transl Sci. 2014;7(6):476-481.

Robinson N, Moshabela M, Kapungu C, Owusu-Ansah, Geller SE. Barriers to intrauterine device uptake in a rural setting in Ghana. Health Care Women Int. 2014 Aug 25:1-19.

Geller SE, Koch AR, Martin NJ, Rosenberg D, Bigger H. Assessing preventability of maternal mortality in Illinois: 2002-2012. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2014;211:698.e1-11.

Khare MM, Koch A, Zimmermann K, Moehring PA, Geller SE. Heart Smart for Women: a community-based lifestyle change intervention to reduce cardiovascular risk in rural women. J Rural Health. 2014 Sep;30(4):359-68.

Robinson N, Geller SE. Recommendations for scale-up of community-based misoprostol distribution programs. Int J Gynecol Obstet. 2014;125(3):285-8.

Lawton B, MacDonald EJ, Brown SA, Wilson L, Stanley J, Tait JD, Dinsdale RA, Coles CL, Geller SE. Preventability of severe acute maternal morbidity. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2014 Jun;210(6):557.e1-6.

El Ayadi AM, Robinson N, Geller S, Miller S. Advances in the treatment of postpartum hemorrhage. Expert Rev Obstet Gynecol. Nov 2013;8(6):525-537.

Fischer JH, Sarto GE, Hardman J, Endres L, Jenkins TM, Kilpatrick SJ, Jeong H, Geller S, Deyo K, Fischer PA, Rodvold KA. Influence of Gestational Age and Body Weight on the Pharmacokinetics of Labetalol in Pregnancy. Clinical Pharmacokinetics. 2014;53(4):373-83.

Drogos LL, Rubin LH, Geller SE, Banuvar S, Shulman LP, Maki PM. Objective cognitive performance is related to subjective memory complaints in midlife women with moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms. Menopause. 2013 Dec;20(12):1236-42. PMC3762921.