As people across the globe pause to increase awareness of the progress and benefit of brain research during Brain Awareness Week, news of an exciting first for women is taking place here in Canada: the announcement of the Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Research Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging to act as a leader in developing qualitative knowledge on the subject of brain health.
Our differences do matter

Through my philanthropic work with the Women’s Brain Health Initiative, I became increasingly aware of how few research initiatives specifically looked at the impact of the sexes with respect to brain health. Women suffer from depression, stroke, and dementia twice as much as men as we age, and over 70 percent of new Alzheimer’s patients are women. Women are not only at greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease when compared to men; per capita, they also bear six times the cost of Alzheimer’s disease care that men do. Yet research today still focuses on men.

If scientists can figure out the mechanism that causes more Alzheimer’s disease in women, they might be able to develop treatments that halt the process.

This project will contribute sustained resources for the next 10 years to examine female brain health concerns in Canada, advancing our understanding of why women experience dementia differently. By doing so we hope to develop effective treatments and a cure that meets women’s needs specifically.

Recognizing that we need to change the dialogue and put women at the forefront of scientific discovery, The Posluns Family Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Ontario Brain Institute (OBI), and the Alzheimer Society of Canada (ASC) have joined together to financially support a research chair position to study cognitive aging and associated disorders in relation to sex and gender — the first of its kind in Canada.

Shining light on diseases

This chair will support an exceptional researcher working to enhance women’s brain health through the study of cognitive aging and associated disorders. More specifically, this initiative will build capacity in research that accounts for gender and sex — that is, social and biological influences — on brain health and aging for women. The chair holder will work to translate the research results into gender and sex-sensitive policies and interventions that improve brain health and promote wellness in aging.

This project will contribute sustained resources for the next 10 years to examine female brain health concerns in Canada, advancing our understanding of why women experience dementia differently. By doing so we hope to develop effective treatments and a cure that meets women’s needs specifically.

The partnership and research chair position shows that Canada has reached a tipping point in which we must address differences between male and female brain health research — that we need to find answers to progress women’s brain health. This move is a significant one in the right direction to finding solutions.