Fitting, for the end of Women’s History Month, Biden signed an executive order last week to advance women’s health research and innovation.
In the executive order, Biden said, “My administration is committed to getting women the answers they need about their health. 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 color, older women, and women with disabilities.”
Biden has called on Congress to make a $12 billion investment to fund the research. This money would be used to create a fund for women’s health research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is meant to help set a national standard for women’s health research.
“I will continue to call on the Congress to provide the transformative investments necessary to help our researchers and scientists answer today’s most pressing questions related to women’s health. Investing in innovation in women’s health is an investment in the future of American families and the economy,” Biden said in the order.
In November, Biden launched the first-ever White House initiative for Women’s Health Research, which was to be led by First Lady Jill Biden and the White House Gender Policy Council. The initiative set out to deliver recommendations to advance women’s health research, engage the scientific, private sector and philanthropic communities and provide research in areas ranging from women’s heart health to menopause.
The executive order will require agencies to advance their investments in women’s health research, report those findings and help to close research gaps so that the U.S. can “maximize our ability to prevent, diagnose, and treat health conditions in women” the order said.
Agencies included are the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (AARP-H), the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program.
The executive order also encourages advancing women’s health research through artificial intelligence. Agencies looking into this will be the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
The HHS will focus mainly on menopause-related research and investments to identify and improve on resources available to women to help better understand menopause. The Department of Defense will also conduct research and investments towards Service women and veterans.
The former first lady of California, Maria Shriver, said at the announcement of the executive order, “I’ll bet today that this is the first time a president of the United States has ever signed an executive order that mentions the words ‘menopause’ and ‘women’s midlife health’ in it.”
As Women’s History Month comes to an end, Biden has advocated for women’s health research to be a consistent duty for the country to start implementing more focus too.
“There’s not a damn thing a man can do a woman can’t do,” Biden said at the executive order announcement. “To state the obvious, if you want to have the strongest economy in the world, you can’t leave half of the country behind.”