PARTNERS

WHAM’s research is encouraged through the generous support from the following partners and collaborators:

American Heart Association

The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives dedicated to ensuring equitable health for all—in the United States and around the world. The American Heart Association’s signature women’s initiative, Go Red for Women® (GRFW), has been the trusted, passionate, relevant force for change to end heart disease and stroke in women all over the world for nearly two decades. GRFW and WHAM will collaborate to directly address the lack of societal-level evidence on the economic cost, benefits, and social impact due to the underrepresentation of women in cardiovascular research.

BrightFocus Foundation

BrightFocus Foundation is a leading source of private research funding to defeat Alzheimer’s, macular degeneration and glaucoma. Supporting scientists early in their careers to kick-start promising ideas, BrightFocus addresses a full and diverse range of approaches from better understanding the root causes of the diseases and improving early detection and diagnosis, to developing new drugs and treatments. The nonprofit has a longstanding commitment to funding pioneering, sex-based research in Alzheimer’s and related dementias. BrightFocus currently manages a global portfolio of over 275 scientific projects, a $60 million investment, and shares the latest research findings and best practices to empower families impacted by these diseases of mind and sight.

Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School is a leading local and national force in advancing the health of women, with a rich history and strong foundation of women’s health and sex-differences discovery, clinical care, and advocacy for equity in the health of women and is the Premier Partner and the Lead Scientific Research Partner of the WHAM Collaborative for Women’s Health Research. The Connors Center shares the bold vision of improving the health of women and a commitment to joining forces to advance scientific discovery for the benefit of all women.

GO2 for Lung Cancer

GO2 for Lung Cancer (GO2) relentlessly confronts lung cancer on every front, every day. Founded by patients and survivors, GO2 is dedicated to increasing survival for those at risk, diagnosed and living with lung cancer. GO2 serves as the “go-to” for assistance across the care continuum and is the source for improving health policies and leading public awareness to shift the disease away from stigma to hope. The Women and Lung Cancer Research and Preventive Service Act provides a foundation for WHAM and GO2 to engage in strong partnership to advance our shared goal of improving health outcomes for women.

La Jolla Institute for Immunology

La Jolla Institute (LJI) is one of the top five research institutes in the world focused on the study of the immune system. LJI is home to three research centers that harness the efforts of collaborative groups of researchers on defined areas of inquiry, to accelerate progress toward the development of new treatments and vaccines to prevent and cure autoimmune conditions, cancer and infectious disease. Together, LJI and WHAM will create a framework for researchers to re-analyze existing data with sex as a biological variable, to work together to spark new projects, to hire new faculty to build key research areas, to communicate via the WHAM Report, and to establish an ignition point for new leadership in the scientific field.

RAND Corporation

WHAM commissioned The RAND Corporation in 2020 to conduct a data-driven study of the economic impact to society of increasing the investment in women’s health research. This first research project comprises four disease modules: Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis as representative of autoimmune disease, coronary artery disease and lung cancer. In the future, we plan to expand our research to include global data and other conditions which predominantly, exclusively or differentially affect women.

To the best of WHAM’s and RAND’s knowledge, this is the first analysis of its kind to create and calibrate a microsimulation model of investments in health R&D that examines differences for women’s health research investment and should become a seminal part of the arsenal in advocating for increased investment in women’s health research. The research methodology and the microsimulation models have been vetted by a diverse panel of experts convened by RAND.

We appreciate the following organizations who joined us in supporting the WHAM-backed Resolution in Congress in May 2022 to expand women’s health research.