Calgary experts are welcoming new funding for research into women’s health, but say lasting change requires sustained investment.
On November 5, the Government of Alberta launched Closing the Gap, its inaugural campaign to support sex-specific medical research and give practitioners a comprehensive view of ailments so women receive appropriate treatment.
The first round of funding, totalling $5 million, will focus on women’s neurological health, such as conditions like migraines, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and the cognitive symptoms associated with the pregnancy, postpartum, and menopausal life stages.
Post-secondary institutions, healthcare partners, and for-profit entities are among the groups eligible for funding. Each group must submit its project proposal by Dec. 2 to be considered for its share of $1 million for up to two years.
A news release from the province described suitable projects as those that address treatment gaps between the sexes and identify innovative solutions to reduce diagnostic delays and improve women’s access to care.
“Women deserve health care that recognizes their unique needs and helps them get the answers and treatment they need,” said Justin Wright, minister of primary and preventative health services.
“Alberta has exceptional researchers and health professionals working to make that possible. Our government is supporting their work to help turn promising ideas into better care for women across the province.”
Local experts in related fields have since celebrated the announcement, calling the funding a step in the right direction for women’s health — an area they said deserves similar grants in the future.
Experts praise women-specific funding
Signe Bray, associate professor in UCalgary’s radiology department and research director at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, applauded the funding. She said both existing initiatives and this new announcement have reinforced the demand to expand neurological knowledge.
“I think it’s great, I think it’s an area that I see getting more attention as of late,” she said.
Urogynecologist by trade, Erin Brennand, an associate professor and department head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at UCalgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, shared the same sentiment.
“I was very excited to see the province opening up some opportunity for women’s health-specific research here in the province,” she said.
“Of course, I was a little bit jealous that it had a specific target of neurology, but I’m also very hopeful that this is just the beginning of opportunities for all that have dedicated their careers specifically to women.”
The funding builds on two separate one-time $10 million grants the province awarded to the Calgary Health Foundation and Alberta Women’s Health Foundation in May 2024, both of which went toward research on conditions commonly reported by women.
Still, despite women making up more than half of Canada’s population, an October 2025 report found that, in the last 15 years, just seven per cent of nationally funded grants focused on female-specific health questions. In Alberta, that number is just under four per cent.
Why these figures matter, Bray and Brennand said, is because women were historically excluded from initial studies on an array of subjects, meaning that today’s academics have been tasked with playing catch-up.
How research gaps impact quality of life
Bray explained that after a new scientific discovery, the natural next step is to conduct research on animals before applying it to humans. She said there’s often a bias toward including only male animals, which has, in turn, disadvantaged human women.
“Some of the knowledge gaps start quite early in the pipeline, and then kind of propagate forward,” said Bray.
“At the clinical level, there are documented times when treatments that have been developed, but maybe not tested as extensively on women, ended up being harmful rather than helpful.”
Brennand named instances where certain medications worked differently for women than men as an example. In human studies, she said that concerns around fluctuating hormones skewing results were usually cited as the reason for purposefully excluding women.
“The river runs very deep in terms of the lack of understanding of women’s health,” said Brennand.
“It starts very early in the discipline…there was a built-in assumption that scientific discovery related to the male model of health would equally apply to women.”
To address this, Brennand recommended allocating future funding to several areas beyond neurology. She named reproductive conditions like endometriosis and polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, as well as midlife and senior women’s health more broadly.
“Specifically, I’m thinking about perimenopause and menopause, and the way that it affects chronic disease for women in the second act of their lives,” said Brennand.
“Things like osteopenia and osteoporosis and associated morbidity and mortality from falls, as well as cardiovascular disease, and, of course, neurologic conditions.”
The latter was the case for one Calgary resident, who has reported her migraines worsening as she has aged.
Resident asks for long-lasting, accessible migraine solutions
Lindsay Thomas, 42, has experienced migraines for more than 10 years. She described the onset of them as “quite debilitating,” naming not only intense, long-lasting headaches, but also vertigo and sometimes vomiting.
Thomas said that being involved in a car accident exacerbated her symptoms. Trying different medications and chiropractic therapy has helped alleviate this somewhat — progress that was interrupted by her entering perimenopause.
She described an experience with an unexpected migraine last week.
“It wasn’t as bad as it was on the day it started, but the symptoms lasted all week, so it definitely made work challenging just because I found myself with a short fuse,” she said.
“You’re not even aware because you’re so focused on the pain that your head is in, that you can’t even fathom what’s going on around you.”
Before these hormonal changes, Thomas said she could predict when a migraine might happen, such as by noticing major temperature fluctuations in the week’s weather forecast. Now, she said, it has become tough to tell when one might happen.
Thomas said that she’s interested in trying Botox — an approved preventive treatment for chronic migraines, which women are three times more likely than men to experience, especially those above 40, according to Migraine Canada.
However, she said that getting approved for the treatment is a lengthy process, and wished that there was a way to fast-track the steps and for more migraine solutions, generally.
As for the province’s new funding, Thomas said, “I’ll believe it when I see it in action.” She said she’d like the awarded research projects to study women across age groups to ensure comprehensive results.
“I think that they need to have a broad group of women, or, you know, just people in general to study migraines,” said Thomas.
“Kind of just get a range of what’s causing them, what treatments they’ve tried, and go from there…because the ones I’ve tried are not long-term.”
Copyright 2026, LiveWire Calgary. All rights reserved.
Sarah Palmer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, LiveWire Calgary.