The state announced a new grants program aimed at advancing the understanding of how disease and other health issues affect women.
The women’s medical research grants program will offer $1.5 million of Women’s Health Research Catalyst Grants, open to the sector’s best and brightest to apply.
Grants between $50,000 and $150,000 will be awarded for one-year research initiatives specifically focused on sex and gender comparisons and underfunded or under-researched conditions impacting women.
While all areas of health and medical research will be considered, some target areas have been identified as requiring greater understanding of the influence sex and gender have on these conditions – acknowledging that for women they can be experienced very differently to men.
These key areas include sexual and reproductive health, cardiovascular health, oncology, orthopaedics, and chronic pain, among others.
Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said that many medical conditions unique to women or those that affect women differently or disproportionately “haven’t received the funding or focus they should.”
“For too long, medical misogyny has labelled women too unreliable to study due to fluctuating hormones – but this shouldn’t mean we are excluded, we should be made a focus because of these biological differences,” Ms Thomas said.
Eligible applicants will need to be from a Victorian Administering Institution and undertaking research in a health and medical field, including discovery, pre-clinical, clinical or lived experience.
Applications for the Women’s Health Research Catalyst Grants open on Monday, January 13.
Details: health.vic.gov.au/catalyst-grants-womens-health-research-priorities
