Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Director Jennifer Klein at the White House Conference on Women’s Health Research

Good morning.  Welcome to the White House Conference on Women’s Health Research.

I am honored to be here with so many leaders committed to advancing women’s health research.

I’d like to start this morning by reflecting on the historic progress we have already made through the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, thanks to the leadership of the President and First Lady.

As those gathered here know all too well, women make up half of the population. But, for far too long, women’s health research has been underfunded and understudied.

To close research gaps and pioneer the next generation of discoveries, the President and the First Lady launched this Initiative to fundamentally change how we approach and fund women’s health research.

Over the past year, since the Initiative began, the Biden-Harris Administration has prioritized women’s health research like no prior administration.

First, we committed nearly a billion dollars for women’s health research—from the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, and beyond. These federal research dollars will support ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research on topics like heart health, bone health, menopause, and more.  And in his State of the Union address, the President called on Congress to make a bold, transformative investment of $12 billion to support women’s health research, including to create a new central fund for women’s health research at the National Institutes of Health.

Second, the President issued an Executive Order which directed agencies across the federal government—from the Department of Health and Human Services to the National Science Foundation to the Department of Veterans Affairs—to make changes that will lead to better research and evidence and, in turn, better care. 

As just one example, agencies have strengthened research and data standards to ensure that women’s health is being considered at every point in the research process—from grant applications to data analysis to reporting.  These changes will help ensure that federal research dollars work harder for women and advance our knowledge of women’s health.

The Executive Order also asked agencies to prioritize research on the understudied area of women’s midlife health – because we know how much more we need to do to address research gaps on diseases and conditions that are more likely to occur after menopause, such as rheumatoid arthritis, heart attack, and osteoporosis. To close these gaps, agencies are developing robust research agendas to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and strengthening data collection on women’s midlife health.

We are confident that these new investments, and the policies that we have put in place across the Biden Administration, will contribute to future research breakthroughs, new treatment guidelines, and, in the end, better health care and outcomes for women.

I will close by saying thank you again to all of you gathered here today.  It is your commitment and work that have advanced the field and brought us to this moment of opportunity.  I look forward to continuing to work together to improve the health and lives of women everywhere.