Grants or Gifts Relating to Women in Higher Education

Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.

The Healthcare Institute for Innovations in Quality at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in partnership with Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, have received a $8.3 million grant to support a four-year study of pregnant women with heart disease. The project, Heart Outcomes in Pregnancy Expectations (HOPE), will follow 1,000 participants with cardiovascular disorders to understand their characteristics and develop treatments to mitigate maternal deaths and illnesses. The grant is the largest NIH grant the university has ever received.

Duke University in Durham, North Carolina has received a $3.9 million grant to research the underlying causes leading to anterior cruicate ligament (ACL) injuries, and why those injuries are more common among young women than men. According to the research team at Duke, college-aged women athletes are 10 times as likely as their male peers to suffer an ACL tear. The new project will leverage imaging technology to study the knee in motion, examining how the ACL stretches and what movements could increase injury risk.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a nonprofit research and educational institution in Laurel Hollow, New York, has received a $1 million donation from the Arlindo and Evelyn Jorge Family Foundation to support the institution’s breast cancer research initiatives. The funds will be used to revitalize the McClintock Laboratory and support the laboratory’s future projects.

The Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California has been awarded a $3.4 million grant from the United States Department of Health and Human Services to test a new method for slowing cognitive decline in aging women. Scholars at the medical school have recently developed a new drug for clearing waste from the brain’s lymphatic system. The recent federal grant will be used to examine the efficacy of combining that drug with targeted ultrasound treatment to accelerate lymphatic waste removal.