Wendy Bennett, MD, MPH

Professional Titles

• Research Director, General Internal Medicine; Research Director, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians

Primary Academic Title

Associate Professor of Medicine

Background

Centers and Institutes

• Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research
• Center for Women's Health, Sex and Gender Research
• Women's Wellness and Healthy Aging: A Program in Menopause and Mid-Life Medicine
• Johns Hopkins Fellowship in General Internal Medicine

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-bennett-139bb067

Find a Clinical Trial

Videos

Evaluation of Obesity Studies | Dr. Wendy Bennett (April 30, 2018)

Women's Health, Sex Differences, Gender Differences (February 27, 2019)

Recent News Articles and Media Coverage

Sex hormone levels may affect heart-related risk for men, but not women, with diabetes, Healio (February 13, 2026)

Additional Academic Titles

Associate Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics

Research Interests

Primary field: Women’s and maternal health

Areas of specialization: Maternal cardiometabolic health; preventive medicine; implementation science and pragmatic clinical trials; digital health/mHealth behavioral interventions; health services and community-engaged research; sex and gender differences; health equity; learning health systems/EHR-based research.

Research Summary

Dr. Bennett is a general internist and health services researcher whose work leverages pregnancy and the postpartum period to prevent cardiometabolic disease and reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, advancing high quality  care for all women and their families. She has sustained a high-impact research program of pragmatic and community-based research with 120+ peer-reviewed papers (including one with >900 citations. Her signature innovation is a technology-driven behavioral intervention called Healthy for Two, with a mHealth app available in English and Spanish, which limits excess weight gain in pregnancy and promotes postpartum weight loss. She has tested its integration into prenatal care and community-based early home visiting programs. Her work is also among the first to rigorously demonstrate sex-specific risk factors for diabetes and heart disease across women’s lifespan, including differential effects of sex hormones in females and males on diabetes outcomes. Her work has been a vehicle for training >30 scholars, for which she has received multiple honors for her mentoring.

Google Scholar - Publications

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&tzom=240&user=u1BDyCoAAAAJ

PubMed - Publications

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/wendy lynet.bennett.1/bibliography/40225429/public/

Selected Publications

• Gisinger T, He JH, Oyeka CP, Ma J, Srialluri N, Woodward M, Michos ED, Kalyani RR, Clark JM, Kautzky-Willer A, Vaidya D, Bennett WL. Sex Hormones and Cardiovascular Risk in Type 2 Diabetes: Cohort Study of the Look AHEAD Trial. Diabetes Care. 2026 Mar 1;49(3):497-501. doi: 10.2337/dc25-2465. PMID: 41582527; PMCID: PMC12925976.
• Drabo EF, McKinney CD, Martin LM, Nair D, Coughlin JW, Chen T, Borahay MA, Wang NY, Bennett WL. Protocol for the economic evaluation of the "Healthy for Two/Healthy for You" pragmatic lifestyle intervention in prenatal care to reduce gestational weight gain and gestational diabetes mellitus. Contemp Clin Trials. 2025 Sep;156:108037. doi: 10.1016/j.cct.2025.108037. Epub 2025 Jul 31. PMID: 40752820; PMCID: PMC12673530.
• Martin LM, McKinney CD, Escobar Acosta L, Coughlin JW, Jeffers NK, Solano-Umaña A, Carson KA, Wang NY, Bennett WL, Bower KM. Remote Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Postpartum Weight Retention: Protocol for a Community-Engaged Hybrid Type I Effectiveness-Implementation Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Res Protoc. 2025 Jan 7;14:e62847. doi: 10.2196/62847. PMID: 39773922; PMCID: PMC11751656.
• Bennett WL, He JH, Michos ED, Kalyani RR, Clark JM, Woodward M, Syed N, Ma J, Everett AD, Yang J, Graham D, Ellis G, Vaidya D. Weight Loss Differentially Impacts Sex Hormones in Women and Men With Type 2 Diabetes: Look AHEAD Sex Hormone Study. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2025 May 19;110(6):e2001-e2007. doi: 10.1210/clinem/dgae584. PMID: 39219157; PMCID: PMC12086392.

Honors

• Donna Vogel Women’s Health Champion Award, Johns Hopkins University-Center for Women’s Health, Sex and Gender Research, 2022
• Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine Frederick Brancati Excellence in Mentoring Award, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 2015
• Best Women’s Health Poster, Society of General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting, 2013
• Clinician-Investigator Award, Society of General Internal Medicine, MidAtlantic Region, 2012
• Johns Hopkins Clinician Scientist Award, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 2009

Memberships

• Society of General Internal Medicine
• The Obesity Society
• The American Diabetes Association
• The American Heart Association