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The Federal Government Doubles Down on Women's Health Research Investments

MSM President and CEO Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice issued a call to action during session with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden during the Clinton Global Initiative 2024 Annual Meeting.

By Tonie Marie Gordon, Nonprofit Quarterly

From September 23 to 24, 2024, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) 2024 Annual Meeting brought together nonprofit leaders, government officials, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and other changemakers to take collective action on "the world's most pressing challenges." In a session on advancing social impact on key human rights issues, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden announced a $500 million investment from the Department of Defense (DoD) dedicated to women's health research.

Since the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research was announced in November 2023, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has committed $200 million and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) — an agency focused on accelerating innovative health research — has committed $100 million. Across agencies, the federal government is set to invest at least $800 million toward women's health research.

According to Dr. Jill Biden, each agency investing in women's health research has developed its own priority areas. ARPA-H is focusing on ovarian health, menopause, and chronic diseases. NIH has identified menopause as a key priority area. The DoD will focus on understudied areas of women's health research most relevant to women in military service, including arthritis, chronic fatigue, and heart disease.

The White House Initiative on Women's Health Research fills a critical gap in clinical research, which has historically focused on men.

As detailed in , the lack of research on women's health carries deadly consequences. Diseases that claim thousands of women's lives each year, like cervical and ovarian cancer, are too rarely the subject of medical research. Furthermore, destabilizing health conditions like endometriosis that affect women exclusively and cause tremendous pain are underdiagnosed because too little is known about them, and because health screenings for endometriosis can be ineffective.

Gender disparities in clinical trials run even deeper than the neglect of women's health concerns. Clinical trials that involve experimentation on animals often fail to include female animal specimens in their research, and men make up most of the participants in Phase I clinical trials, a crucial stage where hypotheses and research questions are formed. Taken together, this creates a clinical research environment that is, as Dr. Biden stated, "based on men's bodies, men's needs."

Moving Women from the Periphery to the Center

"How many of you have come away from your doctors' offices with more questions than answers?" Dr. Biden asked the crowd at CGI's annual meeting. Dr. Biden recounted instances in her life and in the lives of the women closest to her where they sought medical answers to no avail. This confusion among healthcare providers is tied to a lack of understanding of how women's bodies work and how they change throughout life. Dr. Biden said that her conversations with people across the country revealed that "women are really hungry for this type of knowledge."

Dr. Chelsea Clinton, who moderated the session, said that the Initiative is helping to normalize conversations about women's health, to move the dialogue from "quiet corners with groups of friends" to large-scale forums like the one created by CGI. The CGI 2024 Annual Meeting, timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly, provides powerful reach and exposure for people in many sectors working on health equity.

Though women's participation in clinical research is increasing overall, we still need more racial and ethnic diversity among women who participate.

By highlighting her experience as a physician and as a scientist, another speaker, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, president and CEO of ºÚ¶´ÉçÇø of Medicine, showed that including Black women in clinical research is about more than representation.

Inclusivity "starts with the trial design… starts with the trial investigators," Dr. Montgomery Rice said. In addition to diversity among the people carrying out the research, she added that how practitioners treat research participants goes a long way. She elaborated that people need to "understand that they have a choice."

Inequities in women's health research can be at least partially attributed to the lack of women in medical and science professions. While the United States has made strides in many areas that adversely affect women's health research — including the diversity of participants in clinical trials — the number of women in key health research roles and the level of support they receive for their work is still instrumental in perpetuating these disparities.

Dr. Montgomery Rice lauded the progress we've made in making medical schools more gender diverse, reflecting that about half of medical school students are women and that conversations in medical schools are shifting as a result. However, when it comes to bringing more women of color to the table as leaders and decision-makers, Dr. Montgomery Rice's own position served as a stark reminder that there is more work to do. "We have a little bit of a challenge as you start to move up the ranks," she stated. "I am the only African American woman who is the president of a medical school in this country."

Catalyzing Future Investments for Women's Health Research

In the effort to drive more dollars into the women's health space, Dr. Biden said that nonprofits and the private sector have a major role to play. According to Dr. Biden, through government-sponsored research, "we see what works and what doesn't work" so that other sectors can use that information to innovate.

"There's such amazing work on the horizon… but it's going to take some time," Dr. Biden said of the Initiative.

Dr. Montgomery Rice also acknowledged the need for investments outside the federal government to make real strides in women's health research. "It should not just be the government alone." She continued, "My call to action is for all of us… to be accountable to women's health."

"Think about, in your circle of influence, where you can shift resources," Dr. Montgomery Rice added. "And resources are not always dollars… some of it is time, some of it is human capital expertise, some of it is going to be AI solutions of how we evaluate data sets, all of that is really, really important to us moving faster and more efficiently and more effectively in changing the paradigm for women and women's health research."