On May 19th, the Steering Committee for the Coalition for Women’s Brain Health (CWBH) met in Las Vegas for an exciting and productive in-person session that coincided with the 2025 Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement (WAM) Forum — a global gathering focused on driving progress in women’s brain health research, advocacy, and action. Founded by journalist and leading women’s health advocate Maria Shriver, WAM at Cleveland Clinic brought together over 300 stakeholders focused on women’s brain health and caregiving issues, providing a powerful platform for the CWBH to share updates, deepen collaboration, and build new momentum in the fight to improve brain health equity for women.

“The work WAM started in here in Las Vegas shouldn’t stay in Vegas. We are experiencing a sea of change in our understanding women’s brain health, but all of us must all recommit to keeping up the momentum by advocating for further research and policies that promote women’s overall health.”
Maria Shriver

At the Forum, Steering Committee members joined other experts in sharing about their recent accomplishments and ambitious next steps. Dr. Emily Jacobs spoke about the groundbreaking work underway at the Women’s Brain Health Initiative: “We owe women a century of progress. We need a shift in science culture and a radical reimagining of how research is done. At the WBHI, to us, that means a very science-first, ego-last, very collaborative effort. We are using the combined power of the University of California system to shine a floodlight on women’s brain health, building the largest and most comprehensive collection of brain health data ever acquired for women.”

Dr. Diana Slowiejko outlined CWBH’s next phase of action: “We’re all about action. We’re drafting a really important, seminal review paper on the topic of lowering the risk of AD in women. Secondly, we are going to be funding some secondary evidence generation research projects. Thirdly, we are going to launch in the near future a women’s brain health awareness campaign. As of a few days ago, we officially launched our platform: www.coalitionforwomensbrainhealth.org.”

“An advantage of hosting our Steering Committee meeting around the Las Vegas event was that WAM had assembled dozens of leading experts from around the country, so it turned out to be a perfect location for us to launch the Coalition publicly and recruit new members,” said Sandy Gleysteen, Executive Producer of WAM at Cleveland Clinic and a Steering Committee member. “We are actively looking to bring together as many stakeholders in the women’s brain health field as possible to be a resource to one another as we work to better understand the complexity of women’s brains and their impact on women’s overall health as well as to family caregiving needs.”

Following the WAM Forum, the Steering Committee meeting brought together many of our interdisciplinary experts align on priorities, share feedback, and chart the future direction of the coalition. Key discussions focused on actions tied to CWBH’s three strategic pillars:

• Research on sex- and gender-based differences in brain health
• Support for caregivers and understanding caregiver burden
• Access to care and innovative care delivery models

If you are interested in learning more about the work of the Coalition, please check us out at www.coalitionforwomensbrainhealth.org.”

To learn more about the WAM Forum, visit: https://thewomensalzheimersmovement.org/wam-forum/

We look forward to sharing more updates soon.