$100 million new gift from Melinda French Gates to advance women’s health research
Philanthropist Melinda French Gates announced a sweeping new initiative: a $100 million partnership to advance women’s health research.
The effort brings together Pivotal, the group of organizations founded by French Gates, and the nonprofit Wellcome Leap, to tackle some of the most urgent but historically underfunded areas of women’s health.
These include autoimmune diseases, mental health, cardiovascular disease, menopause, and chronic illnesses—all areas where women face disproportionately high mortality rates and limited research.
The funding—$50 million each from Pivotal and Wellcome Leap—will launch two new women’s health programs in 2026. French Gates said the investment aims to radically accelerate progress.
“We are really going to go after women’s diseases we haven’t looked at—things like cardiovascular disease, menopause, chronic illnesses,” she told Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts.
“We really can do a lot more research in these areas—and I’m talking in years, not decades—to change women’s lives.”
At the Summit, she emphasized a foundational truth behind her philanthropy: “A woman’s trajectory in life—I believe—really starts with their health. Whatever they want to do, they have to be well. And yet, we don’t invest far enough money into women’s health. We’re going to change that.”
The new partnership highlights a longstanding inequity in medical science: women have too often been treated as an afterthought. “For so long, the research community has treated women as if they’re small men.
Women are not small men,” said Regina Dugan, CEO of Wellcome Leap, on stage at the Summit. She pointed to one striking example: “Ninety-nine percent of the studies on the biology of aging do not include a model for menopause. Now how can that be? We’re 50% of the population.”
French Gates’ initiative seeks to fill this critical void, aiming to create a pipeline of research that can deliver solutions faster and reshape women’s healthcare globally.
This announcement builds on French Gates’ deep commitment to women’s health and empowerment. Since stepping away from day-to-day leadership of the Gates Foundation, which she co-chaired for 25 years, she has accelerated her own philanthropic investments.
In May 2024, she unveiled a $1 billion pledge to advance women’s rights and leadership worldwide, including $200 million to grassroots organizations focused on women’s power, $240 million for individual leaders directing funds to health nonprofits, and a $250 million open call to improve women’s mental and physical health.
Her work complements the Gates Foundation’s own priorities. Just last month, the foundation pledged $2.5 billion through 2030 to expand research and development across maternal, contraceptive, and menstrual health.
For French Gates, the stakes go far beyond medicine. “A woman can’t do well in life if she’s not healthy,” she said. “If we want, for instance, more women in our legislatures, more women in Congress, more women in our state houses to make good policy, they need to be well to be able to do it—and that is one of the barriers we’re going to break down.”
The $100 million partnership, then, is not only about treating illness. It is about creating a foundation for women to thrive—in health, in leadership, and in shaping the future.