Menopause Brain Health (Request for Applications)

Menopause Brain Health (Request for Applications) is sponsored by Foundation for Women's Health (FWH). FWH posts Requests for Applications (RFAs) annually, focusing on underfunded areas of women's health research.

How to Apply — Foundation for Women's Health FWH posts Requests for Applications (RFAs) on an annual basis, focusing on the most overlooked and underfunded areas of women's health research. See below for active RFAs, and click here to apply or learn more. Funding Priorities for 2026 Menopause is a neurological transition that reshapes the female brain.

At menopause, ovarian estrogen production drops sharply and permanently, one of the most abrupt endocrine shifts in a woman's lifetime, and because estrogen plays a central role in brain function, this transition triggers measurable structural and metabolic changes in the brain.

Yet for decades, clinical trials on brain health failed to acknowledge sex as a relevant factor, and some excluded women entirely, with perimenopausal and postmenopausal women particularly overlooked. As a result, treatments have been developed and prescribed with no understanding of how hormonal changes alter drug metabolism or brain health in women.

The consequences are huge: nearly 2/3 of all Alzheimer's cases occur in women, and accumulating evidence points to the hormonal shifts of menopause as a critical and potentially modifiable factor. Miscarriage is staggeringly common. An estimated 23 million pregnancies end in miscarriage annually.

Despite this burden, current clinical guidelines do not advise routine examination of pregnancy tissue, leaving over 90% of all miscarriage cases unexplained.

This knowledge gap is the direct result of chronic underinvestment in research: NIH has historically underfunded miscarriage research, with limited private funding to fill the gap, and less than 2% of all medical research funding goes to pregnancy, childbirth, and female reproductive health combined.

Millions of women are told there is no answer for their pregnancy loss when the truth is that this is not a medical inevitability, it is a funding choice, and it is one we can reverse.

Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory condition affecting at least 11% of women worldwide (over 190 million people) yet there is no cure, there is no non-invasive diagnostic tool, and surgery is still required to confirm diagnosis, a delay that increases symptom severity, accelerates disease progression, and drives up costs for patients and health systems alike, contributing to an average diagnostic wait of 7-10 years.

The funding level for this disease is equally striking. In FY24, NIH only allocated $28 million to endometriosis research compared to $311 million for prostate cancer and $3. 1 billion for HIV/AIDS, despite endometriosis affecting more than five times as many Americans as HIV.

Current treatments are limited to pain management and hormonal suppression — neither of which addresses the root cause, the infertility it drives, or the elevated cancer risk it carries. This is not a scientific dead end. It is a funding choice.

Sex Differences in Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) We know that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) cause harm. What we don't know is how profoundly that harm differs by sex — and that gap is costing women their health. Sex-specific differences in both the prevalence and long-term consequences of ACEs have rarely been analyzed, especially in the longitudinal studies most needed to understand them.

What limited evidence exists is striking: studies rarely explore sex differences in ACE outcomes despite males and females differing meaningfully in their experiences of ACEs, their inflammatory responses, and their depressive symptoms.

In women specifically, ACEs have been linked to a dose-response increase in autoimmune disease, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, thyroid disease, and Sjögren's syndrome, conditions that already disproportionately affect women and remain poorly understood.

In women, ACE exposure has also been linked to endometriosis, fibroids, chronic pain, migraines, and cardiovascular disease, a constellation of female-predominant conditions whose shared roots in early adversity are almost entirely unresearched. We cannot build effective prevention or treatment without understanding who is being harmed, how, and why. Sex is not a subgroup.

It is a primary variable — and it is time to treat it as one. Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS) Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS, formerly known as PCOS) affects 1 in 10 women of reproductive age worldwide, making it one of the most common endocrine disorders in existence, yet it remains one of the most underfunded and least understood.

PMOS is clinically defined by a cluster of hormonal and metabolic features because the complexity and heterogeneity of PMOS have consistently confounded researchers attempting to understand its causes and long-term consequences. 70% of women with PMOS remain undiagnosed, largely because the science to support consistent diagnosis and treatment simply does not exist.

Annual NIH funding for PMOS from 2016-2022 was $32 million — compared to $262 million for rheumatoid arthritis and $66 million for tuberculosis, despite PMOS affecting greater numbers of people with comparable degrees of morbidity.

There is no standardized protocol for treating PCOS; current treatments involve lifestyle modification and medications to manage reproductive symptoms and insulin resistance, but there are no treatments that directly target hyperandrogenism — the core hormonal driver of the disease that affects 70% of patients.

PMOS is not an unsolvable disease, it is a neglected one, and we’re investing in the foundational research needed to finally understand, diagnose, and treat it. Am I eligible to apply for a grant award if I am at a research institution outside the United States? Unfortunately we cannot award grants to institutions outside the United States at this time, but the population being studied may be located abroad.

Are only non-profit institutions allowed to apply for grants? Yes, we can only consider grant proposals from non-profit institutions. May a single PI submit multiple applications?

A PI may submit up to two applications per funding cycle. How long are the terms of the grant awards? Grant awards can be for projects of 1-2 years in duration.

Will you fund other areas of research in the future or do your funding priorities remain the same every year? What is your policy on indirect costs? FWH permits up to 15% of any funding made for a specific purpose or project to be used by the recipient organization for its general operational, administrative, overhead or other indirect cost purposes associated with such purpose or project.

In general, indirect costs are those that support the entire operations of an awardee and are shared across multiple projects. This indirect cost limitation applies both to the primary award recipient and to subawardees. General operating support grants and endowment grants are not eligible for indirect cost recovery.

Indirect costs associated with any FWH-funded project must be specified in the budget for that project, and may not be charged against equipment costs or travel.