Curated News
By: NewsRamp Editorial Staff
September 09, 2025
WHAM Launches 2025 Edge Awards to Fund Early-Career Women's Health Researchers
TLDR
- WHAM's 2025 Edge Awards offer early-career researchers $25,000 grants to gain a competitive advantage in women's health innovation and leadership.
- The WHAM Edge Awards provide unrestricted funding for pre-clinical, clinical, or translational research on biological sex influences across four key health areas.
- WHAM's initiative advances women's health research to improve outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and create a more equitable future for all.
- WHAM's 2025 awards fund bold ideas in women's health using AI and novel approaches to transform research and economic returns.
Impact - Why it Matters
This initiative addresses a critical gap in medical research where women's health has been historically underfunded and understudied, despite overwhelming evidence that diseases affect women differently and disproportionately. The underinvestment in women's health research has real-world consequences—misdiagnoses, ineffective treatments, and higher healthcare costs affect millions of women and their families. By supporting early-career researchers, WHAM is not only advancing scientific understanding but also creating a pipeline for future innovation that could lead to better diagnostics, treatments, and preventive care specifically tailored to women's biological needs. The economic impact is equally significant, with research showing substantial returns on investment that benefit the broader economy while improving health outcomes for half the population.
Summary
WHAM (Women’s Health Access Matters) is launching the 2025 WHAM Edge Awards through its WHAM Investigator’s Fund, providing critical $25,000 unrestricted grants to early-career researchers studying how biological sex influences health outcomes. The initiative targets four key areas that disproportionately affect women: autoimmune disease, brain health, cancer, and heart health, while also welcoming proposals in emerging fields like healthspan, bone/muscle health, endometriosis, menopause, PCOS, and innovative methodologies including AI and secondary data analysis. The awards are designed to fill a critical funding gap for promising research that often stalls due to lack of preliminary data required by traditional grantmakers.
Led by Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Anula Jayasuriya and supported by WHAM's Scientific Advisory Board featuring experts from Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, and other prestigious institutions, the program operates through nominations from WHAM Research Collaborative members—a group of over 100 leading scientists and physicians. Awardees will be announced on October 29, 2025, with a virtual WHAM Forum presentation scheduled for November 18, 2025. Founded by Carolee Lee, WHAM emphasizes that women are significantly understudied in medical research despite being disproportionately affected by diseases like lung cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's, making this investment both medically urgent and economically smart.
The organization's research shows that investing $350 million in women's health research generates a $14 billion return to the U.S. economy, demonstrating that advancing women's health through initiatives like the WHAM Edge Awards is not only transformative for healthcare outcomes but also represents one of the smartest economic investments available. By accelerating research into sex-based biological differences, WHAM aims to improve health outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and strengthen the economy while ensuring that bold, high-potential ideas from early-career researchers receive the support needed to drive progress in women's health innovation.
Source Statement
This curated news summary relied on content disributed by citybiz. Read the original source here, WHAM Launches 2025 Edge Awards to Fund Early-Career Women's Health Researchers
