Women’s cardiovascular research at a funding wall

Women-specific cardiovascular research received just €150,000 across three EU-funded projects between 2021 and July 2026, according to a new report.

The findings, from the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), are striking given that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women in Europe.

How small is €150,000?

The Brussels-based think tank examined 22,528 Horizon Europe projects, worth around €59bn in European Commission funding. Among projects focused specifically on women’s health, breast cancer accounted for 143, worth around €270m, roughly 1,800 times the women-specific cardiovascular total.

Pregnancy and maternal health also ranked among the best funded, receiving €200m across 105 projects.

The imbalance reflects a wider pattern: CEPS concludes that cardiovascular disease remains under-researched relative to its burden among women.

Why the gap matters

Dr Julia Grapsa, who led a European Society of Cardiology clinical consensus statement on women’s heart centres in May 2026, has described heart disease in women as “critically underdiagnosed and undertreated”.

The statement goes on to note that risk factors unique to women, such as pregnancy complications and early menopause, are routinely overlooked in standard cardiovascular risk assessments.

The “funding cliff”

Encouragingly, policymakers have begun to tackle the issue as early as last year.

The European Commission’s Safe Hearts Plan, unveiled in December 2025, set out aims to cut premature cardiovascular deaths by 25% by 2035. It also included a research and innovation roadmap to close cardiovascular research gaps, especially for women.

But CEPS identifies a further obstacle: a “funding cliff”. The paper found that women’s health investment is concentrated in early-stage research and falls away towards validation, implementation and market entry, leaving promising findings without a route to larger trials.

What needs to change?

In terms of solutions, CEPS argues for a dedicated European women’s health strategy or mission, potentially under the EU’s next research programme, FP10.

This, it says, combined with greater use of public–private partnerships to carry research through later stages, could move the field “towards a more connected, strategic and end-to-end innovation ecosystem”.