Partnership with the REAM Foundation and Misophonia Research Fund
Over the course of a six-year collaboration, the Miller family and SPARC have helped bring greater visibility and structure to this emerging field. Early work included a comprehensive assessment of the scientific, clinical, and funding landscapes for misophonia, revealing key challenges such as the lack of a unified definition, limited research coordination, and minimal public investment. These findings laid the groundwork for future efforts and were captured in SPARC’s Misophonia: A Giving Smarter Guide, published in 2019.
In parallel with the landscaping analysis, the REAM Foundation and members of the SPARC team used the assessment to design, build, and launch a philanthropic initiative exclusively dedicated to misophonia research. The Misophonia Research Fund (MRF) launched in 2019 with more than $2 million in funding to six research teams around the world. The MRF is guided by an expert board of scientific advisors, with SPARC providing programmatic and scientific strategy and management over the next five years. Over the course of four more funding cycles, SPARC and the MRF advanced more than $12 million in philanthropic capital for more than 30 investigator-initiated research projects that addressed these scientific priorities:
- focusing on interdisciplinary science and collaboration
- building a fundamental understanding of misophonia
- supporting the development and validation of diagnostic tools
- driving increased rigor in misophonia clinical studies
In 2024, SPARC fully transitioned MRF management to the Fund’s first ever executive director and rapidly growing full-time staff. Our partnership with the REAM Foundation and the transformation of the misophonia field are the result of an ongoing commitment to shepherd and support rigorous, interdisciplinary scientific and medical research that will improve the lives of those who live with misophonia and their families.
