Jill Biden Announces $100 Million in Funding for Women’s Health Research
Money will be channeled to women’s health researchers, startups and used to invest in early-stage discoveries, says first lady.
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Feb. 23, 2024 — In her first major Women’s Health Research deliverable since launching the White House initiative last year, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden Wednesday announced $100 million in federal funding designed to jumpstart funding for women’s health research.
The money comes from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
Biden, who heads up the initiative along with the White House Gender Policy Council, made the announcement during an appearance in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Today, I am here to announce that ARPA-H is launching its first-ever ‘Sprint for Women’s Health,’” Biden said. “Over the next year, ARPA-H will invest $100 million to fund life changing research. Through this sprint, we are going to make the types of investments that you told us would change everything.”
The first lady described how the money would be used including by investing in discoveries early, when private companies may not be willing to take the risk. Funding would also be given to women’s health researchers and startups to help them grow and bring their ideas to market.
“We have a clear goal: to fundamentally change how our nation approaches and funds women’s health research,” Biden said. “Research on women’s health has always been underfunded, many medical studies have focused on men and left women out, many of the medicine dosages, treatments, medical school textbooks, are based on men and their bodies – and that information doesn’t always apply to women.”
Biden went on to say that there are big gaps in research on diseases and conditions that only affect women, that disproportionately affect women, or that affect women and men differently.
The federal funding helping to launch the White House’s Women’s Health Research Initiative is significant, according to Anita McBride, director of American University’s First Ladies Initiative and former chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush. Equally so, though, is the first lady’s presence.
“[Biden’s] visibility is important not only for the White House, but it is important for those organizations that are her partners in this [initiative] that are invested in these issues, whether it's health research centers, whether it's university research centers that are maybe going to get some of this money,” said McBride, co-author of Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women. “There are a lot of people invested in making sure that this is staying front and center as much as possible.”
Biden’s Women’s Health Research initiative is in line with former First Lady Laura Bush’s work when she joined the Heart-Truth campaign in 2002 as an ambassador traveling throughout the United States to talk with women and raise their awareness of the risks of heart disease. At the time, the campaign brought to the forefront that heart disease is the leading cause of death of women in the United States and still remains so today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Heart-Truth campaign was sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Through the Heart-Truth campaign, Bush introduced the ‘Red Dress’ as the national symbol for women and heart disease awareness to deliver an urgent wake-up call to American women. The Red Dress reminds women of the need to protect their heart health and inspires them to take action.
Later in 2007, the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women’s Health was established in the Texas Tech University Health and Sciences Center. The institute was created to foster a new approach to women’s health care across the country and is active in communities across Texas. More than $3.5 million has been devoted to ground-breaking research related to women’s health, according to the institute’s website.
Earlier this year, Biden said Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California, approached her about a greater effort both inside and outside of government to close long-standing gaps in women’s health research. With Biden’s funding announcement, Shriver said on her social media, “We are going to transform women’s health research in this country and the way the healthcare system treats women.”
The Bidens’ son, Beau, died from brain cancer in 2015. Since then, the Bidens have advocated for cancer research through their Cancer Moonshot initiative. Jill Biden explained because of her husband’s experience in government, he knew of a model for accelerating research. She referenced the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Defense agency that created technology that has transformed society with the internet, GPS, and Siri.
“Joe wanted to use that same bold approach to confront the health challenges of our time. So, he created ARPA-H to launch big ideas with lightning speed, to give scientists the freedom to reach beyond the possible, to invest in the ideas that might have some financial risk, but could revolutionize our health,” the first lady said.
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