Wellcome Leap and Pivotal, the organization founded by Melinda French Gates, have announced a $100 million partnership to accelerate women’s health research. The funding will focus on cardiovascular health, autoimmune disease, and mental health conditions that disproportionately affect women.
The partnership brings Wellcome Leap’s total investment in women’s health to $250 million, advancing toward a stated goal of $1 billion in philanthropic capital for under-researched conditions affecting women. The funding will support two new women’s health programs launching in 2026.
Despite women living longer than men on average, they spend nine years of their lives in poor health compared to seven years for men. Only 1 percent of global health research funding was allocated to women’s health conditions beyond cancer in 2020, according to data cited by the organizations.
“Women’s health is chronically underfunded, chronically under-researched, and, as a result, not well understood. We need to look at this broken status quo through new eyes and stop tolerating women’s pain and suffering,” said Melinda French Gates, Philanthropist and Founder of Pivotal. “With Wellcome Leap’s proven model, we expect to see outcomes years – even decades – sooner than we would through other approaches.”
Wellcome Leap operates using a model adapted from DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, designed to deliver breakthrough results in three-year, milestone-driven programs. The organization has launched 12 programs across 30 countries, supported by over 160 institutions, nonprofits, and companies.
The organization has already invested $150 million in three women’s health programs targeting maternal care to reduce stillbirths by half, reducing women’s lifetime Alzheimer’s risk by 50 percent, and shortening heavy menstrual bleeding diagnosis time from five years to five months.
Early results from the stillbirth prevention program include evidence that a maternal blood test could predict conditions leading to stillbirth with greater than 80 percent accuracy as early as 12 weeks of pregnancy. This could provide clinicians and community health workers with new prevention tools.
“We need more breakthroughs, and we need them faster,” said Regina E. Dugan, CEO of Wellcome Leap and former Director of DARPA. “I have seen how ambitious, emotionally invested teams with clear goals can overcome obstacles, collapse timelines, and deliver solutions once thought impossible.”
McKinsey Health Institute estimates that closing the women’s health gap could add more than $1 trillion to the global economy annually by 2040. The organizations emphasized that achieving real impact will require a global coalition of funders willing to commit resources at scale.
Wellcome Leap was founded by the Wellcome Trust in 2020 as a U.S. nonprofit focused on building unconventional programs to deliver health breakthroughs. Pivotal, established by Melinda French Gates in 2015, works to accelerate social progress and expand women’s power and influence globally through investments, philanthropy, and advocacy.
