- Award amount: $100,000
- Letter of Intent (LOI) Deadline: September 5, 2025 11pm PDT
- Application Deadline: October 8, 2025 11pm PDT
- Anticipated Notice of Decision: November 28, 2025
- Funding start date: December 1, 2025
The Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI), in partnership with the BC Women’s Health Foundation, is pleased to announce the inaugural WHRI Leveling Up: Women’s and Newborn Health Research Action Grant competition to support previously pilot-tested women’s and/or newborn’s health research project involving a) screening or diagnostic tools; or b) treatment interventions. These tools/interventions must have proof-of-concept pilot data and be ready to advance to the next stage of empirical testing, or a larger-scale trial, or scale-up, or implementation. One grant will be awarded at $100,000 for a two-year period. The WHRI Leveling Up Grant competition is distinct from the WHRI Catalyst Grant program in that it is intended to fund the next phase in the research discovery pipeline. As such, it is a requirement that the applicant demonstrate how the proposed project represents the “next level”.
Awards are open to BC researchers at a university or research hospital setting, but candidates must be a member of the WHRI and cannot have held a Catalyst Grant as a Principal Applicant in the past three cycles, including the current Catalyst Grant competition. Eligible researchers include academic researchers and clinician scientists.
Submission Instructions
The application process for this funding opportunity consists of a letter of intent and full application. Applications that fail to submit a letter of intent by the deadline will not be eligible for funding.
The LOI is due on September 5, 2025 at 11PM PDT. It must be submitted using the following link: Note that the submission link will be inserted here as soon as it is available.
*Please note you will not be able to save the LOI once it has been started so ensure you can complete the LOI in a single sitting.*
After September 15, 2025, an email invitation to submit a full application will be sent to each Principal Applicant who meets the eligibility criteria, which will allow them to upload and submit the full application in pdf format.
Questions about the WHRI Leveling Up: Women’s and Newborn Health Research Action Grant competition or the application process can be sent to Kathryn Dewar KDewar@cw.bc.ca.