Research
WBHI invests in (i) sex and gender brain-aging research that better meets the unique needs of all women and (ii) research on the efficacy of its programs designed to protect the brain health of women, caregivers, and families.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
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WBHI created and funds the world’s first Research Chair in Women’s Brain Health & Aging, awarded to Dr. Gillian Einstein at the University of Toronto. This ten-year initiative, together with the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) finances the research of the Chair to discover how midlife events affect later women’s brain health and answer the question as to why more women than men have Alzheimer’s disease.
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WBHI funds research on Brainable, the student program designed to give children evidence-informed methods for promoting mental wellness and protecting their brain health. Drs. Heidi Cramm and Erna Snelgrove-Clarke of Queen’s University led a research project analyzing exit slip surveys of 4,500 greater Toronto (GTA) grade five to eight public school students throughout the 2022-23 school year in ten school boards. The data exposes troubling linkages between children’s excess social media use and sleep deprivation.
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WBHI, in a new partnership with Brain Canada and the Krembil Foundation, will see $3.3 million invested in addressing sex and gender gaps in Canadian brain health research. With support from The Erika Legacy Foundation and Power Corporation of Canada, this new research will investigate mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and postpartum depression, with a significant emphasis on sex-specific factors or differences. This new research was funded in part through WBHI’s Stand Ahead Challenge.
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WBHI initiated and funds the Sex & Gender cross-cutting theme of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration and Aging (CCNA), a multifaceted national research effort involving more than 350 researchers and clinicians who are studying age-related neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.
Each of the 19 teams has a ‘sex and gender champion’ – a researcher who is responsible for promoting and integrating sex and gender considerations throughout the lifetime of the research project. Each Champion possesses (or acquires) expertise in the study of sex as a biological variable and/or gender as a social determinant of health, and takes on the role of an educator, mentor, consultant, facilitator, advocate, co-investigator, or principal applicant. Following best practices means if the research shows a difference between men and women then the next step is to ask why. It’s the ‘why’ which is the key to discovery.
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WBHI, together with Brain Canada, funds sex and gender expansion grants, with a focus on aging, neurodegeneration or stroke. The six grants are designed to encourage researchers to incorporate sex and gender-based analysis (SGBA)-driven research hypotheses into their existing work by contributing to overcoming barriers in research and creating a foundation for sex and gender considerations to become standard practice within the scientific community.
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WBHI, together with the Citrine Foundation of Canada, funds an exploratory research project on memory, aging, and the long-term effects of hormone therapy in trans individuals. This exciting cutting-edge research is being conducted by Dr. Ruebs Walsh under the guidance of Dr. Gillian Einstein at the University of Toronto.
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WBHI, together with Brain Canada and CIHR, funds up to 3 Canadian teams in the JPND international consortium linking pre-diagnosis disturbances of psychological systems to neurodegenerative diseases Proposals will need to focus on one or several of the following neurodegenerative diseases from a sex and gender perspective: Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, Parkinson’s disease and PD‐related disorders, Prion diseases, Motor neuron diseases, Huntington’s disease, Spinocerebellar ataxia and Spinal muscular atrophy.