About Us
Welcome to the LIFT lab where we explore how women's reproductive health across the life course shapes their future heart and brain health. Led by Dr. Karen Schliep, our team is dedicated to understanding the connections between reproductive experiences, cardiovascular health, cognitive aging, and dementia risk through research, education, and community engagement.
Our Mission
We seek to understand how reproductive health, gynecologic conditions, pregnancy experiences, and social and biological factors across the life course shape long-term health and aging. Through rigorous epidemiologic research, innovative data science, and collaboration across disciplines, we aim to identify pathways that connect early-life and reproductive experiences to chronic disease, cognitive aging, and overall well-being. Our goal is to generate evidence that advances prevention, improves diagnosis, and promotes healthier lives across generations.
Our Approach
The most important determinants of health often occur long before disease develops. Our research integrates population health data, clinical cohorts, and innovative analytic methods to understand how reproductive, pregnancy, and gynecologic factors shape health across the lifespan. Using resources such as the Utah Population Database and NIH-supported cohort studies, we examine the pathways linking reproductive health to later cardiovascular disease, cancer, cognitive decline, and dementia.
By connecting data across generations, health systems, and decades of follow-up, we seek to identify opportunities for prevention, accelerate diagnosis, and promote healthier aging for women and families.