Canada's My Normative launches new way to reduce barriers in sex- and gender-specific research
A crucial need for research accessibility
Women, girls and female-identifying persons experience different health realities due, in large part, to a significant lack of sex and gender focused research and funding investment that allows for the exploration of female specific health concerns.
Now Canadian start-up My Normative - a health research platform that partners with researchers, organizations and institutions to support them to more easily account for sex and gender-based differences - is to introduce a new ‘starter' product to further reduce barriers for researchers.
My Normative’s starter product offers a cost-effective and participant-friendly way for researchers to ‘get their feet wet’ collecting and analyzing sex and gender data.
The product is structured to facilitate sex and gender specific insights and not require researchers to be experts in women’s health. Researchers will collaborate with My Normative to implement their specific study protocol and deploy seamlessly with the companion app to their study participants.
“In order for scientific research in the health and life sciences to move forward in a way that is equitable across sex and gender, we must make it easier for innovators and researchers to include and accurately represent sex and gender in scientific research at scale.
“In particular it is urgent that we remove barriers to this new generation of passionate innovators who want to account for sex and gender in the research process but might need a little extra support to get started” says CEO and Co-Founder, Danika Kelly.
The crucial need for research accessibility
Only 8.8% of NIH grant spending over the last 10 years has focused on women’s health including conditions that impact women uniquely, differently, and disproportionately meaning that researchers with an appetite for understanding and addressing sex based differences are uniquely challenged to find funding to meaningfully support their work. Reality is: women’s health remains underfunded. Therefore breakthroughs to improve the health of women have lagged and, according to McKinsey, created a $1T sex and gender data gap.
Moving the needle on women’s health equity requires first moving the needle in research accessibility - with early stage research at the heart of that.
Funding projects - applications now open
As part of the launch of the new ‘starter product’, My Normative will be funding up to five projects per year for the next five years. Researchers will receive funding for a “Starter” technology implementation for prospective research across expertise and domain areas that impact women differently and disproportionately.
Award applications are now open. Find out more and apply here, or reach out to Allison Swelin, Director of Growth at allison@mynormative.ca.