Melinda French Gates is putting another $215 million into women’s health, adding to a push that has topped $600 million over the past two years.
The new funding, announced Thursday, will support contraceptive access and maternal care, along with initiatives aimed at middle-aged women, including further study of menopause.
French Gates told The Associated Press in an interview that women’s health is the cornerstone of the work she does through Pivotal, the group of organizations she founded to handle her philanthropy and investments.
“It’s just blaringly obvious that women’s health is fundamental, she has to be well to do well in life,” French Gates said.
Since 2024, when she stepped away from The Gates Foundation, which she founded with her now ex-husband Bill Gates and built into one of the world’s largest private funders of health care, French Gates has sharpened her approach to supporting women. This latest funding reflects what the AP described as a more strategic focus on areas she sees as underfunded.
It includes a $40 million donation to Co-Impact for an initiative that embeds mental health support into maternal and primary care, especially in Africa.
French Gates is also giving $10 million to The Menopause Society to improve menopause care in the United States by educating health care practitioners and expanding outreach in areas where care is limited. She said she hopes the donation encourages other funders to work on the issue too.
According to the World Economic Forum, women make up half the population, but the health issues that specifically affect them receive only 2 percent of private health care funds. The lack of funding has led to a lack of products and services dedicated to treating them.
“The role of philanthropy, in my opinion, is to look at some of these societal problems that have been left behind, and shine light on them, show ways of making progress so you can then crowd in other donors and ultimately crowd in government funding,” she said.
“Part of what I’m doing here, I hope, is sending a signal to say, ‘This is really important. Let’s do something about it.’ And my hope is that I’ll be able to get others who will join me.”
Dr Stephanie Faubion, medical director of The Menopause Society and director of The Mayo Clinic’s Center for Women’s Health, said the United States currently has about 6,000 counties where patients have critically low access to menopause-competent clinicians.
She said the donation will allow The Menopause Society to offer its educational resources to more parts of the country that need them.
“Menopause remains one of the most overlooked and underserved areas in medicine, and The Menopause Society believes women deserve better,” Faubion said. “We’re ready to make those changes with the support of donors like Pivotal.”
Faubion said research into menopause treatments was already underfunded before recent medical research cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration took effect.
“I think philanthropy is going to fill a greater role than it ever has in the past because we are just not going to have the same type of government funding that we’ve had before,” she said.
“Funding is hard to come by these days, much, much harder than it was before. And the need hasn’t gotten away. We still have to do the research somehow.”
Faubion said the size of French Gates’ gift matters, but so does the attention it brings.
“It shows that somebody like Melinda Gates and Pivotal feel that this is an important issue,” Faubion said. “It will illuminate the gaps that are still there… and it makes people not only aware, but maybe motivated to take some action.”
For French Gates, raising the profile of women’s health issues is nearly as important as increasing the funding.
“I want women’s health issues to not be invisible,” she said. “I don’t want the default to be that women are expected to deal with pain and suffering. I want them to be seen for what they’re going through, their real life experiences, and have those issues addressed so they can live their very best lives.”
Read more from ABC News.
