- Intramural Research Program, National Institutes of Health, USA
Pamela Stratton MD FACOG is a gynaecologist and surgeon. She completed medical school at New York Medical College, began her residency in obstetrics and gynaecology at Harvard University’s Beth Israel Hospital in Massachusetts and finished her residency at Yale University in Connecticut.
Dr Stratton holds a professorship at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. She is a member of the World Endometriosis Society (WES), Society for Reproductive Investigation (SRI), the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), and is Past Chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s (ASRM) Endometriosis Special Interest Group (EndoSIG). She has published and lectured extensively nationally and internationally on endometriosis.
During her nearly 30-year career at NIH, she has pursued ground-breaking research on issues critical to women’s health within both the Intramural and Extramural Research Programs. For the last 20 years, a major area of her research focus has been studying treatments for chronic pelvic pain associated with endometriosis and improving understanding of the relationship between pain and endometriosis.
She has been awarded one of the highest honours in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), an Outstanding Service Medal, for her research in endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain. Dr Stratton was awarded the first-ever Endometriosis Association Clinical Research Fellow to establish NIH as a site to train clinical investigators in endometriosis. She has shown that women with pain associated with endometriosis have central sensitisation and myofascial dysfunction, findings similar to those described in a rat model. These novel insights regarding the engagement of the central nervous system in the initiation and maintenance of chronic pelvic pain associated with endometriosis were summarised in 2011 in an invited review for Human Reproduction Update.
Dr Stratton has been a WES Ambassador since 2011.