Across every corner of the world, women outlive men — yet those extra years are too often spent in the shadow of dementia, disability, and diminished independence. This enduring paradox, observed for decades without resolution, has now drawn a $7.5 million NIH commitment to the University of Southern California, where a new interdisciplinary center called GeroSCORE will bring together biologists, neuroscientists, epidemiologists, and data scientists to ask why longevity and wellbeing so often diverge along lines of sex. The hope is not merely to answer a scientific question, but to reshape how