Dr. Staci Pollack, MD DS
This week (May 14th – 20th) is National Women’s Health Week! To help celebrate, I interviewed some of my favorite, most badass, brilliant, female minds in the health and wellness industry to feature.
Dr. Staci Pollack is a Reproductive Endocrinologist and Infertility (REI) specialist at Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she is an associate professor of OBGYN and Women’s Health and the director of medical student education. She has a clinical REI practice, helping couples to achieve their dreams of pregnancy, located in Hartsdale, NY. She is fortunate to share her life with her husband, four children and two dogs.
Shannon: How did you get started in the industry?
Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a doctor and to help people. I grew up tutoring kids, and now I get to pass on medical knowledge as part of my career. During college I was a biology/genetics major, and during medical school I found my love for OBGYN, which is the perfect mix of medicine and surgery and offers the ability to form lifelong bonds with my patients.
As an REI, I get to be on the journey with my patients towards parenthood and to help them on this journey. I have been an REI for over 20 years and every day am amazed by how far the field has advanced.
What does it mean to be a woman in health and wellness?
As an OBGYN and REI, I feel very fortunate to be a woman helping other women, taking charge of our own health and wellness. I believe that reproduction is a right, and all women deserve the opportunity to decide when and if to have a family, regardless of social or societal factors. There are many ways to build a family, and my job is to help people decide what’s best for them.
What about health is SEXY to you?
To me, “sexy” comes with a confidence and independence. Being empowered to make decisions about my own health, my own body and my own reproduction is sexy. Putting my patients in the driver’s seat of their own reproductive health is also sexy to me.
How do you feel empowered in your line of work?
It is such a wonderful time in medicine, as so much more is possible now than ever. I can empower people to build their families via so many potential fertility treatments – IUIs (intrauterine inseminations), IVF (in vitro fertilization), clomiphene citrate and injectable gonadotropins, to name a few. I can empower people to have healthier children, in certain circumstances, using preimplantation genetic testing, to screen embryos for genetic diseases or chromosomal imbalances and avoid certain genetic disorders. I can empower people to be in control of their reproductive futures by offering the option of freezing their eggs.
