Jill Biden Revives Women’s Health Initiative Post-White House
The former first lady has been named the chair of the Milken Institute’s newly launched Women’s Health Network.
In her first formal post-White House role, former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will continue advocating for women’s health as the newly named chair of the Women’s Health Network, which was launched Tuesday by the Milken Institute.
The Women’s Health Network was established by the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank to bring together research institutions, start-ups and entrepreneurs, corporations and businesses, investors, payers, policymakers, patient and community organizations, health systems, and philanthropists to advance women’s health—an approach to solving understudied women’s health issues that Biden explored while first lady.
“I am honored to join the Milken Institute as we unite leaders around a shared mission: for women everywhere to benefit from the lifesaving, world-changing research we know is possible,” Biden said in a news release.
As first lady, Biden led the first White House Women’s Health Research initiative, an executive order that was signed by President Joe Biden in 2023 that fundamentally changed the approach of how the country funds research on women’s health. And in 2024 before leaving office, the Bidens hosted the first Women’s Health Research conference inside the White House.
“From endometriosis to healthy aging, the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research made important investments in research and development, while making clear it will take collaboration across industries to bring these innovations to scale,” Biden said.
Biden, whose doctorate is in education, is expected to help galvanize participation, collaboration, and shared action in the Women’s Health Network, according to a news release.
The former first lady while in the White House increased government funding for women’s health research to $1 billion through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPAH), the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.
The goal of the Women’s Health Network, according to the Milken Institute is to facilitate engagement and financing across public and private sectors to optimize access to research and development, infrastructure, and products and services for women by elevating existing and new efforts in the area of women’s health.
“What is unique and different about our interest and focus here, which is really about the private sector stepping up, the private sector providing investment, the provider sector responding to the business case and really helping to finance these companies,” Esther Krofah, executive vice president of Milken Institute Health, told Fierce Health.
Krofah went on to say that data shows that women’s health faces persistent underinvestment in research and innovation across many disease conditions that affect women uniquely, differently, or disproportionately.
“The Milken Institute is grateful for Dr. Biden’s leadership during her tenure in the White House and her steadfast commitment to championing investment in women’s health,” she added in the release. “We know progress is possible and it can be achieved through partnerships in the network that can transform women’s health and well-being for years to come.”
The Women’s Health Network’s priorities this year are to establish a digital platform to foster and accelerate data-sharing, resource collection, financial counseling, and institutional knowledge exchange; to design the infrastructure for a pooled Investment Fund to support researchers, community organizations, industry partners, and innovators; and to develop proof-of-concept activities and projects with deliverables that support women’s health innovations. In her new role, Dr. Biden and the Milken Institute are expected to outline plans for additional convenings to create new partnerships to advance women’s health outcomes.
The Weekly Wrap
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