For people who live with anxiety, the experience is often persistent, deeply distressing, and disruptive to everyday life. Despite its prevalence and societal impact, anxiety remains one of the least understood mental health conditions. For researchers and clinicians, it can be challenging to trace symptoms back to the biological processes that cause them. Those processes span levels of complexity from molecular interactions to social behavior, and understanding them requires diverse fields of study, including computational modeling, genetics, and behavioral neuroscience. A deeper, more integrated understanding of these mechanistic layers is essential to drive the next generation of diagnostics, therapeutics, and preventive strategies for anxiety.

The Milken Institute's Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC) has partnered with the Dauten Family Foundation to catalyze scientific discovery across the full spectrum of anxiety research. This initiative will map the existing knowledge of anxiety’s underlying biological mechanisms, identify key stakeholders in the anxiety research ecosystem, pinpoint barriers to progress, and, finally, identify opportunities for high-impact philanthropic investment into multidisciplinary anxiety research.

The SPARC team’s expertise in science philanthropy will inform a strategic roadmap to accelerate progress in anxiety science by fostering collaborative efforts that connect laboratory work to real-world impact. Through this initiative, SPARC aims to reshape our understanding of anxiety at its roots, paving the way for more effective, personalized, and biology-driven approaches to care.