Melinda Gates announces $100M investment in women's health research
Philanthropist Melinda French Gates has announced a new partnership that will commit $100 million to accelerate women's health research.
The partnership between Pivotal, a group of organizations founded by French Gates, and Wellcome Leap, a nonprofit organization, will focus on areas of women's health with the highest rates of mortality, including autoimmune disease, mental health and cardiovascular health.
French Gates announced the new partnership Wednesday in an interview with "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts.
"We are really going to go after women's diseases we haven't looked at, things like cardiovascular disease, menopause, chronic illnesses," French Gates said. "We really can do a lot more research in these areas -- and I'm talking in years, not decades -- to change women's lives."
The partnership is funded by a $50 million donation from Wellcome Leap, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on tackling global health issues, and a $50 million donation from Pivotal, which French Gates founded in 2015 to help accelerate women's progress around the world.
The money will go toward two new women's health programs launching next year, according to French Gates.
"Women go into the doctor and they can't find a solution or they aren't listened to, and if we advance the research and the medicine, we can treat these women's diseases," French Gates said. "We don't need to live nine years longer than men in a state of not good health, and that's what is happening today."
Wellcome Leap, which will oversee the research, says it uses an "accelerated model" of research that delivers "results in years instead of decades."
Around the world, women's health care has historically been underfunded and under-researched, data shows.
French Gates has made women's health a focus of her philanthropic work for the past 20 years.
Last October, she announced a $250 million donation to fund organizations working to improve women's mental and physical health. Awardees of the open call for funding, titled "Action for Women's Health," will be announced in November.
French Gates stepped down last year from her role with the Gates Foundation -- which she co-founded with her ex-husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates -- with a pledge to "commit" to her own philanthropic work.
Gates and French Gates were married for almost three decades before divorcing in 2021.
They share three children.
