$200 Million to Help Advance Women’s Health Under New Executive Order
$200 Million to Help Advance Women’s Health Under New Executive Order
Plus, Jill Biden meets with military families and continues campaign fundraising while Melania Trump tells a reporter to “stay tuned.”
Weekly Wrap is a collection of headlines from the past week. Some publications have paywalls.
This week President Joe Biden signed a new executive order with the first lady looking over his shoulder that will direct the most comprehensive set of executive actions ever taken to expand and improve research on women’s health. These directives, according to the White House, will ensure women’s health is integrated and prioritized across federal research and budget, and will galvanize new research on a wide range of topics, including women’s midlife health.
The President and first lady announced more than 20 new actions and commitments by federal agencies, including through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This includes the launch of a new National Institutes of Health-wide effort that will direct key investments of $200 million in Fiscal Year 2025 to fund new, interdisciplinary women’s health research.
This is a first step toward the transformative central Fund on Women’s Health that the President has called on Congress to invest in, according to a statement from the White House. These actions also build on the first lady’s announcement last month of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Sprint for Women’s Health, which committed $100 million towards transformative research and development in women’s health.
Jill Biden posted a message on her social media praising the step saying, “So today, as we celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re writing a new future for ourselves, and for the girls and women who will follow.”
She added that the executive order and research funding will mean “a future where women leave doctors’ offices with more answers than questions.” And, “A future where no woman or girl has to hear that, ‘it’s all in your head,’ or ‘it’s just stress.’”
Some of the actions include:
The NSF calling for new research and education proposals to advance discoveries and innovations related to women’s health. To promote multidisciplinary solutions to women’s health disparities, NSF invites applications that would improve women’s health through a wide range of disciplines—from computational research to engineering biomechanics. This is the first time that NSF has broadly called for novel and transformative research that is focused entirely on women’s health topics, and proposals will be considered on an ongoing basis, according to the White House.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is updating its grant solicitations and contracts to ensure that applicants prioritize, as appropriate, the consideration of women’s exposures and health outcomes.
The NIH will issue a new Notice of Special Interest that identifies current, open funding opportunities related to women’s health research across a wide range of health conditions and all Institutes, Centers, and Offices. The NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health will build on this new Notice by creating a dedicated one-stop shop on open funding opportunities related to women’s health research.
The NIH’s competitive Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program is committing to further increasing—by 50 percent—its investments in supporting innovators and early-stage small businesses engaged in research and development on women’s health.
Read the full White House fact sheet here.
Odessa American
Bush Family Home to Celebrate National First Ladies Day
March 22, 2024 — The Bush Family Home State Historic Site will be commemorating the important role and contributions of first ladies in U.S. history by celebrating National First Ladies Day on Saturday, April 27, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Bush Family Home, located at 1412 W. Ohio Ave., in Midland. There have been 46 first ladies in the United States and they have had a major impact on American history, society, and culture, including two who called Midland home. Read more
Army Reserve News
First Lady Jill Biden Visits Military Families at Fort Buchanan
March 20, 2024 — As part of her Joining Forces initiative to support military families, First Lady Jill Biden joined a barbecue with hundreds of military families on March 17 at Fort Buchanan, the only U.S. Army installation in the Caribbean. Read more
East Wing Magazine
Author Stitches Together First Ladies History With ‘Common Threads’
March 20, 2024 — It is said that former First Lady Ida McKinley (1897-1901) crocheted 4,000 slippers that were donated to charities and war veterans. It was her way of helping fulfill the role as the president’s spouse while in a fragile state of health. But for another crocheter and author Debra Scala Giokas, the history behind Ida McKinley’s crafted slippers is what ultimately hooked her into learning more about first ladies and their common threads.
Giokas is visiting the Bay Shore Historical Society in Bay Shore, New York, Thursday to present a deep dive into a lesser known hobby of America’s first ladies: knitting. Her book, Ladies, First: Common Threads, recognizes 18 first ladies who have knitted, crocheted, embroidered, quilted, cross-stitched or sewed at one point in their lives. Read more
The New York Times
Stepping Out From Hillary Clinton’s Onscreen Shadow
March 20, 2024 — “The Girls on the Bus” is a fizzy recasting of the campaign-trail memoir “Chasing Hillary” by Amy Chozick, who covered the 2016 election for The New York Times. But it is not a show about Hillary Clinton. Immediately, it takes pains to banish her persona from the screen. The Democratic front-runner of the pilot episode is a governor named Caroline Bennett (Joanna Gleason), and though she is a baby boomer (check) in a pantsuit (check), she also writes romance novels under a pseudonym. Read more
WRAL News
Jill Biden in RTP: Heart Attacks and Other Women's Health Issues Need More Research
March 20, 2024 — First Lady Dr. Jill Biden visited Research Triangle Park Wednesday to discuss the Biden administration's effort to prioritize research and funding for women's health, saying health issues affecting women, including osteoporosis, menopause and heart disease, need more scrutiny. Read more
East Wing Magazine
Jill Biden Calls a Second Trump Presidency ‘Dangerous’
March 19, 2024 — First Lady Dr. Jill Biden Tuesday issued a stark warning about a second Donald Trump presidency saying to a crowd of about a 100 that he is “dangerous to women and to our families.”
Her remarks were made in the Norwich, Vermont, home of Bill and Jane Stetson, who hosted the first lady for a Biden Victory Fund fundraising event.
“I want you to remember what it felt like that morning after in 2016,” Biden said of Trump’s election. Many in the room groaned.
Biden emphasized that her husband has passed the “boldest climate legislation in American history,” appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, guided one of the “the strongest economic recoveries in modern industry,” and secured lower prescription drug prices as well as capped insulin prices.
“Democracy is on the line,” Biden said of the impending election. The first lady spoke of the early days of getting to know her husband, and referred to his late wife, Neilia, who died along with their daughter in a car crash in 1972.
Dr. Jane Sanders, wife of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, was present and told the crowd gathered in the Stetsons’ living room, “This is the most important election in our lifetime.”
Of President Biden, Sanders said “He has the right values.”
Patrick Leahy, former senator from Vermont also in attendance, reminisced on being young members of the Senate with Biden. Leahy said the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was "a disaster."
“Those are people that wanted to destroy our country, destroy our constitution, destroy who we are," he added.
Tickets to the event started at $250. While Biden was in Norwich, protestors gathered on the edge of the town to protest American military support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas War.
ABC News
Melania Trump Makes Rare Appearance on 2024 Campaign Trail
March 19, 2024 — Melania Trump joined her husband at a polling place in Palm Beach, Florida, Tuesday—making a rare public appearance this election cycle. Asked by a reporter if she would be joining the former president on the campaign trail, the former first lady simply smiled and said, "stay tuned," but nothing more. Read more
CBS News
How the First Lady's Role Has Evolved Over Time
March 18, 2024 — The role of the first lady has changed significantly since Martha Washington. Katie Rogers, White House correspondent for The New York Times and author of "American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden," joins "America Decides" to explain how. View here
Cedars Sinai
Women’s Health Research Draws First Lady’s Attention
March 18, 2024 — First Lady Dr. Jill Biden highlighted the new White House Initiative on Women's Health Research during a December visit to Cedars-Sinai. Read more
AARP
How Much Do You Know About U.S. First Ladies?
March 18, 2024 — From Martha Washington to Jill Biden, first ladies have made their marks on American history and culture—all in different ways. They can be deeply or only marginally involved with White House affairs, some have been style icons, others agents of cultural change. Read more
Wood TV
Honesty, Candor at the Heart of Betty Ford’s Legacy
March 17, 2024 — Though the role of America’s first lady has evolved over the years, the fine line they are forced to walk and the impact that they leave on the nation has not. Whether it is serving as a hostess to foreign leaders or as a ceremonial representative of the “ideal” American spouse, every first lady has handled the job in their own way. Betty Ford certainly did. Read more
The Pantagraph
Flick Fact: Has an American First Lady Ever Performed at Downtown’s BCPA?
March 17, 2024 — Yes. Back in the late 1950s, an actress named Nancy Davis performed in a play in that building, called then the Bloomington Consistory. Read more
The Des Moines Register
Iowa History Month: Thank Lou Henry Hoover for Girl Scout Cookies
March 16, 2024 — In 1884, her parents, Florence Ida Weed Henry and Charles Delano Henry, moved the family to California for the more agreeable climate. Read more (This story is behind a paywall)
WGAL
Famous Faces: Look Who's Visited WGAL Over the Years
March 15, 2024 — Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Lancaster in February 1955 and held a junior press conference at WGAL. Read more