Lupita Nyong’o Partners with the Foundation for Women’s Health to Launch Groundbreaking Research Grant on Uterine Fibroids
July 15, 2025 — Washington, D.C. — The Foundation for Women’s Health (FWH) today announced a new research grant in partnership with Academy Award-winning actress and advocate Lupita Nyong’o, aimed at accelerating the development of minimally- and non-invasive treatments for uterine fibroids, a debilitating and often overlooked disease affecting millions of women across the United States.
The FWH x Lupita Nyong’o Uterine Fibroid Grant will fund pioneering medical research to address a long-ignored crisis: Despite affecting over 15 million women in the U.S. and costing the American healthcare system over $6 billion annually, fibroids remain alarmingly under-researched. By age 50, 80% of Black women and 70% of white women will develop uterine fibroids. For Black women, fibroids appear earlier, grow larger, cause more severe symptoms, and result in significantly higher rates of hospitalization and surgical intervention.
“Uterine fibroids have shaped the health experiences of far too many women—silently, painfully, and invisibly,” said Lupita Nyong’o. “This partnership is about shining a light on a condition that has gone unspoken for too long. It’s about funding solutions, driving innovation, and restoring quality of life to millions of women whose pain has been ignored or minimized.”
Fibroids can cause a wide range of disruptive and life-altering symptoms—from heavy menstrual bleeding and anemia to chronic pelvic pain, infertility, and painful intercourse—and the only existing treatments are often surgical, with no guarantee against recurrence. On average, women wait 3.6 years before seeking treatment.
This grant initiative will prioritize research proposals that offer minimally-invasive or non-invasive treatment alternatives to reduce suffering and improve long-term outcomes. The goal is to bring innovative science out of the lab and into the lives of women most impacted.
“For decades, women’s health research has been under-funded and under-studied. We’re here to change that,” said Katy Brodsky Falco, Founder and Executive Director of FWH. “With Lupita’s partnership and the momentum that the urgency for medical research funding at this moment is driving, we are going to transform the way we treat uterine fibroid patients and finally prioritize women’s health.”
The Foundation for Women’s Health is a non-profit venture philanthropy committed to closing the gender research gap in health. Unlike traditional grant-making organizations, FWH targets the most burdensome yet underfunded conditions across the female lifespan—making it the only private-sector funder looking comprehensively across the entire continuum of the female life cycle.
Academy Award-winning Nyong’o, known for her powerful performances, bestselling children’s book Sulwe, and her Webby Award-winning podcast Mind Your Own, brings a deeply personal commitment to amplifying underrepresented stories—now, through this work, extending to women’s health.
Applications for the FWH x Lupita Nyong’o Uterine Fibroid Grant are now open on the Foundation for Women’s Health website, and researchers, medical institutions, and health innovators are encouraged to apply.
For more information about the Foundation for Women’s Health or to donate to support this research, visit: https://www.foundationwomenshealth.org/fwh-lupita-uterine-fibroids.
Header image by Christian Cody
