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Discover Women's Health Research

About DiscoverWHR

DiscoverWHR facilitates the discovery of women's health research. It brings together information on National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported grants, intramural research, clinical trials, and literature that address issues that directly affect women or that present differently in women, such as autoimmune disorders. The DiscoverWHR website is a collaboration between the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) at NIH.

NLM and ORWH will continue to update DiscoverWHR with additional NIH-funded research topics and resources, data sources, and standardized terminologies. We will also add data science tools, such as artificial intelligence, to the site. One of our goals is to help you quickly locate NIH-funded research on specific women’s health topics.

User feedback helps us identify future research areas. Submit your feedback by filling out our feedback form.

New and Updated Research Areas

We frequently add new research areas to the DiscoverWHR website. Check back soon to see information about NIH-supported research on:

  • Anxiety
  • Pelvic floor disorders
  • Bipolar disorder

Prioritization of Research Areas

We developed a standardized process to identify and rank research topics that are relevant to women’s health research so that DiscoverWHR remains a useful resource for the research community.

An infographic showing the prioritization process for Discover Women’s Health, from collecting data from sources to weighing the impact of those sources and creating a ranked list of research areas.

As part of this process, we continuously review sources that reflect current NIH and Department of Health and Human Services priorities and strategies and the needs of the women’s health research community. Some examples of sources include the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Research on the Health of Women 2024–2028, the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan for Autoimmune Disease Research, and requests submitted by website visitors. We track how often health topic areas are mentioned across sources and use this information to create a ranked list of new content for the DiscoverWHR website.

Information Sources

Awarded Projects

RePORTER (RePORT Expenditures and Results) allows you to search a repository of NIH-funded research projects and access NIH-funded publications and patents. It is part of the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) website, which provides access to a variety of reporting tools, reports, data, and analyses of NIH research activities. For help using NIH RePORTER, go here.

Clinical Trials

ClinicalTrials.gov provides information on federally and privately supported clinical trials. Clinical trials are research studies with human volunteers that aim to answer specific health questions. Each listing on ClinicalTrials.gov includes the trial's purpose, describes who can participate, lists locations, and provides contact information.

Want to learn more about participating in a clinical trial? Check out the Patient Resources page on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Common Data Elements

A common data element (CDE) is a question that is paired with a specific set of allowable responses. When used consistently across research studies, CDEs standardize the way data are collected to increase the interoperability of data. The NIH Common Data Element Repository (CDE-R) is a library of definitions for the CDEs that NIH Institutes and Centers require or recommend.

Scientific Literature

NLM's PubMed is a database where you can search for biomedical and life sciences literature. PubMed contains more than 40 million citations and abstracts. While PubMed does not include the full text of journal articles, it links to them when they are available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).

Patient Education Summaries

MedlinePlus is an online health information resource that provides authoritative information from NLM, NIH, and other government agencies and health-related organizations. MedlinePlus offers extensive information about drugs, supplements, and medical tests. It features an illustrated medical encyclopedia and materials in multiple languages, including a dedicated site in Spanish. Other NIH resources may supply patient education information for certain research areas.

Funding Opportunities

The NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts provides notices of grant policies and guidelines. It includes tutorials on how to apply for grants, explains the grant process, and provides compliance information, such as the Human Subjects Research definition and decision tool. ORWH offers funding opportunities for research centered around women’s health issues. For help using Grants.nih.gov, go here.

Biomedical Career Support for Women’s Health Researchers

ORWH supports a variety of programs that address unique obstacles within biomedical careers, provide opportunities for career development and mentorship, and promote research into women’s health issues.

For help finding or using an NLM resource or to report an issue, please contact NLM Customer Service.

Last updated: 05/15/2026