PRESTO

Julia Bond Receives 2025 NIH Early Independence Award to Study Sexual Well-Being

With the $1.25 million award, Bond will examine the relationship between female sexual function and couples’ ability to conceive.

Julia Bond (SPH’24), assistant professor of epidemiology (appointment pending) and a 2024 graduate of SPH’s Epidemiology PhD program, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Early Independence Award to study how sexual wellness prior to pregnancy is linked to conception. 

The five-year, $1.25 million “supports promising, newly graduated scientists with the intellect, and scientific creativity” jumping right to their independent research careers. 

“One of the areas I have been researching is the relationship between sexual function and how long it takes a couple to conceive,” says Bond. “Right now, there is very little known about the role that sexual function, like arousal level or orgasm, plays in conception.”

As a long-time member of the research team for SPH’s web-based preconception cohort study Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO), Bond led a 2023 study which found that almost 25 percent of PRESTO’s female participants met the threshold for sexual dysfunction, and 1 in 3 had experienced recent painful intercourse. 

Yet very few of these participants had raised any concerns with their physicians, Bond says. And no longitudinal studies have tracked female sexual dysfunction (FSD) from preconception through postpartum, compounding this knowledge gap. Bond’s first-of-its-kind cohort study will provide new insight into FSD, aiming to inform opportunities for clinical support and treatment to help couples trying to conceive. An estimated 40 percent of premenopausal women experience FSD globally. 

“I don’t like the idea that people often suffer in silence through uncomfortable, painful, or unpleasant sex to try to achieve their family planning goals,” Bond says. “But without much research in the area, it’s hard to know what might help. This NIH award will enable me to collect more detailed data about sexual function prior to pregnancy so I can more accurately assess how it might be linked to conception.”

During her predoctoral research, Bond designed a new survey module containing validated measures of sexual function, which has been completed by more than 7,500 PRESTO participants. Now, she will add questions about sexual function in follow-up questionnaires and enroll a new sub-cohort to complete daily diaries on sexual behavior.

“This award will enable me to gain a deeper understanding of how the transition from pregnancy planning to pregnancy to parenthood affects sexual function, which I think will be really important to ultimately understanding how to support people in having the sex lives and relationships they want during this life stage,” says Bond. “I hope this work will help elevate sexual function and sexual wellbeing as an important part of family planning—not necessarily just for the mechanics of becoming pregnant but also to support the well-being of the couple over the long term.”

Bond is one of two BU recipients to receive NIH Director’s Awards this year. Meg Younger, assistant professor of biology at BU College of Arts & Sciences, received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a five-year, $475,000 award for “exceptionally creative early career scientists proposing innovative, high-impact projects.” Younger will use the funding to investigate new techniques for unraveling the sophisticated sense of smell that allows mosquitoes to track down humans to bite. The grants are part of the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward program, which offers four programs each year to support innovative scientists who propose impactful behavioral and biomedical research projects. The Early Independence Award is geared towards junior scientists who have recently received their doctoral degree or completed their medical residency, and the award enables them to skip traditional postdoctoral training and move quickly into independent research positions. Mary Willis, assistant professor of epidemiology, became the first BU recipient of this award in 2022, which she used to study the effects of oil and gas development on reproductive health.