American Quarter Horse Foundation Invites Proposals for Equine Health Research Grants

The call targets scientifically rigorous projects in diagnostic methods, physical rehabilitation, and clinical equine care — a direct line of funding for practitioners working on soundness, load tolerance, and post-injury recovery.

What's on the table

The foundation lists five core research priorities for this cycle: joint and bone health, training and performance, reproduction and breeding, genetics and genomics, and colic. For clinicians operating in manual therapy and rehabilitation, the first two categories carry immediate relevance. Joint and bone health maps directly onto the biomechanical deficits we observe in compensatory gait patterns — fascial restriction around the medial and lateral collateral structures, altered proprioceptive feedback through the distal limb. Training and performance intersects with our work on load tolerance and movement retraining under controlled exercise.

Specialized submissions are also accepted in applied practices, equine-assisted services, equine head trauma, genetic diversity, and assisted reproductive technologies. All proposals, regardless of category, are evaluated on the same four criteria: scientific merit, relevance, feasibility, and potential benefit to the American Quarter Horse.

Tiered funding and timelines

AQHF structures awards across three career-stage classifications — Young Investigator, Emerging Researcher, and Established Investigator — with funding limits scaling accordingly. Pre-proposals are due October 1, 2026. Selected projects enter the 2027–2028 funding period, with an expected start date of October 2027.

That 12-month gap between submission and funding is worth noting for any practitioner considering a collaborative research role. Preliminary data collection and protocol refinement can begin now, even before formal approval.

Context and collaboration

Laura Owens, AQHF programs director, stated that the foundation intends to encourage "scientifically rigorous, data-driven projects and collaborative partnerships." The foundation recently worked with the AQHA Genetic Diversity Task Force — appointed by the AQHA Executive Committee — to identify research gaps in breeding practices and population genetics within the breed.

For the rehabilitation community, the takeaway is procedural: the submission window is open, the evaluation framework favors measurable outcomes, and the priorities align with the mechanical and structural questions our field already raises at the treatment table. Researchers and clinicians with applicable data sets should review program guidelines before the pre-proposal deadline.