Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is pleased to announce the re-appointment of Dr. Nir Melamed as the Waugh Family Chair in Twin Fetal Medicine Research, jointly shared by Sunnybrook and the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto, for a second five-year term.
Since joining Sunnybrook ten years ago as a staff physician and senior scientist in the DAN Women & Babies program, Dr. Melamed’s research has focused on understanding and preventing complications more likely to be experienced in pregnancies with twins.
“Twin pregnancies are roughly five times more likely to be complicated by preterm birth, preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction, and other complications, compared with single-baby pregnancies,” says Dr. Melamed, head of the Twins Research Centre and Research Director of the DAN Women & Babies Program at Sunnybrook. “There is an urgent need to promote research in the field of twin pregnancies to increase our understanding of how and why these pregnancy complications occur in twin pregnancies, and to develop treatment and care plans to decrease the risk of complications.”
During his first five-year term as the Waugh Family Chair in Twin Fetal Medicine Research, Dr. Melamed established the Sunnybrook Twins Research Centre (https://twincentre.sunnybrook.ca/), where his work has focused on improving the understanding of how and why pregnancy complications arise in twin pregnancies, and developing resources to support and empower patients with twins and their care providers. In his second term, Dr. Melamed plans to extend the research, knowledge dissemination and educational activities of the centre.
“My vision is to further establish the DAN Women & Babies Program at Sunnybrook as an internationally-recognized leading centre for the conduct of practice-changing research, knowledge dissemination and education in the field of twin pregnancies, with the ultimate goal being to improve the health of women with twin pregnancies and their babies,” he says.
The Waugh Family Chair in Twin Fetal Medicine Research is supported through the generosity of the Waugh Family Foundation. After complications early in the pregnancy with their fraternal twins Chelsea and Aiden, Steve and Stacey Waugh felt strongly about supporting the much-needed area of twin research. Following the healthy, full-term birth of their babies, the family decided to do something so that all parents could understand the risks of multiple births and make the best decisions for their babies. Through the Waugh Family Foundation, in 2018 the Waugh Family Chair in Twin Fetal Medicine at Sunnybrook was born.
The Waugh family are dedicated philanthropists in the fields of health care and education and have three other named chairs with various organizations throughout Canada, including The Richard E. Waugh Chair in Business History at York University, The Waugh Family Chair in Multiple Sclerosis at the University of Manitoba and The Waugh Family Chair in Multiple Sclerosis Research at St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation in Toronto.