Research into women’s health is getting a huge boost in the US after the Pentagon announced this week a $US500 million ($AUD 731 million) investment into further studies.
First Lady Dr Jill Biden made the announcement at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City on Monday — a week after she participated in a Cabinet meeting to discuss the progress various agencies were making on addressing women’s health research.
The initiative will contribute to the research of medical issues that disproportionately affect women in military service, such as ovarian cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, eating disorders, gynaecological cancers, musculoskeletal injuries and how they impact women differently.
The extra funding is part of a broader White House agenda to boost the study of women’s health and comes after the launch of its Initiative on Women’s Health Research in November 2023 which was largely driven by First Lady Jill Biden.
This week, Jill’s press secretary said the First Lady has been putting the spotlight on the “urgent need to close the gap in how we fund and approach women’s health research.”
“The Biden-Harris Administration has quickly mobilised to make progress in less than year, and in the months ahead the First Lady will continue to push the work of this initiative forward, and build on the incredible momentum and enthusiasm we’ve seen across the public and private sectors,” Vanessa Valdivia said.
According to the White House website on the initiative, current research on the diseases and conditions that disproportionately affect women have historically been underfunded and understudied, leading to a deficiency of knowledge and explanations that do not consider their impacts on women.
According to the officials, researchers should “consider sex as a biological variable in study design and analysis” to better grasp the “known and potential sex differences in disease prevalence, presentation, and outcomes.”
In March, President Biden signed an executive order commanding agencies to improve research and data standards on women’s health to better leverage federal funding.
The executive order also directed agencies to back women’s health research and encourage innovation: “My Administration is committed to getting women the answers they need about their health,” Biden said in his order. “For far too long, scientific and biomedical research excluded women and undervalued the study of women’s health.”
“The resulting research gaps mean that we know far too little about women’s health across women’s lifespans, and those gaps are even more prominent for women of colour, older women, and women with disabilities.”
In a press conference before the Cabinet meeting last week, the First Lady described the executive order as “the most comprehensive set of actions that any president has ever taken to advance women’s health research.”
“In his State of the Union Address, he asked Congress for $12 billion to secure the bold and transformative health discoveries we need,” she added.
“Our White House initiative has built momentum for health research focused on women, but we have to keep moving forward. We have to keep wok- — working across government and the private sector to incentive innovative health research for women.
“Our nation is home to the best health research in the world, yet women’s health is understudied and research is underfunded. And we still know too little about how to affectively prevent, diagnose, and treat a range of health conditions in women, from heart disease to cancers.”
“It’s time to write a new story of health care in this country, one where women get the answers we need, where the United States continues to be home to the most cutting-edge research in the world, and where everyone can lead healthier lives.”