Calling for A Massive Investment in Women’s Health Research < Yale School of Medicine

President Biden spoke of his major priorities last night during the State of the Union. Among his essential calls to Congress was to fund $12 billion into women’s health research. During his speech, President Biden remarked, “To state the obvious, women are more than half our population, but research on women’s health has always been underfunded…Pass my plan for $12 billion to transform women’s health and benefit millions of lives across America.”

In November, President Biden together with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden launched the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. Chaired by Carolyn M. Mazure, PhD, the Initiative fundamentally changes how our nation approaches and funds women’s health research.

“This call for investment, on the heels of $100 million in federal dollars committed to women’s health research from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, is critical to transform research on women’s health,” said Mazure, the director of Women’s Health Research at Yale and Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor in Women’s Health Research, and professor of psychiatry and of psychology.

According to the White House Fact Sheet, the investments will support a new fund at the National Institutes of Health and catalyze private and philanthropic commitments to increase funding for women’s health research. “These new resources will make investments that maximize our ability to prevent, diagnose, and treat health conditions in women and ensure women get the answers they need when it comes to their health.”