Funding Announcement
The Department of Health is offering one-year catalyst grants aimed at groundbreaking research that enhances our understanding of how sex and gender influence health conditions.
Assessment Timeline
- Assessment period: 24 February – 7 March 2025
- Notification of outcome: 10 – 23 March 2025
- Funding release and project commencement: End of March 2025
Identified Gaps in Research
The Women’s Health Reform Package has spotlighted significant shortcomings in the Victorian research landscape:
- Women’s health research often remains isolated within specific groups, leading to a lack of integration of sex and gender as essential variables in medical studies.
- Research typically leans heavily on male subjects or models, resulting in an inadequate understanding of biological differences across all sexes.
- Conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women have historically been underfunded and overlooked.
This funding initiative seeks to fill these critical voids and to set the stage for further research activities aimed at transforming the landscape of women’s health.
Grants of up to $150,000 are available, with the funding period lasting one year and requiring both a 6-month progress report and a final report at the conclusion of the grant period.
Objectives of the Grant
- To encourage research that includes diverse sex and gender perspectives in health conditions, allowing for direct comparisons between male and female-derived samples and populations.
- To promote research in underrepresented conditions that specifically impact women, or where the female perspective has been historically neglected.
- To facilitate the pursuit of larger-scale federal or philanthropic funding in these critical areas of research.
Conclusion
By addressing these challenges, this funding opportunity aims to promote gender-sensitive health research and foster an environment for impactful change in women’s health across Victoria.
For more details, please refer to the funding information page.
