Key takeaways:

• The new women’s health division will advance research and implement evidence into clinical practice.
• Key areas of focus include CVD, menopause, polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome and maternal health.

President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order directing HHS to establish a new Women’s Health Division in the NIH within 90 days, the agency announced.

The order also establishes the first White House Women’s Health Task Force, co-chaired by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, “to coordinate federal efforts to improve women’s health from infancy and adolescence through the reproductive years, midlife, menopause and healthy aging,” according to a press release.

The new women’s health division will advance research and implement evidence into clinical practice. Image: Adobe Stock

“For generations, women have faced unanswered questions about conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect them,” Kennedy said in the release. “This new NIH division will confront those questions.”

The new division will advance research on conditions “that uniquely or disproportionately affect women” across their lives, like CVD, cancer, polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome (formerly polycystic ovary syndrome), menopause, Alzheimer’s disease, infertility, fibroids, chronic pain, autoimmune and inflammatory conditions, maternal health, and osteoporosis, HHS said.

The division will also:

• increase scientific reviews of understudied women’s health conditions;
• enhance interdisciplinary research;
• promote personalized medicine and research technologies;
• improve understanding of sex-specific health outcomes;
• increase the inclusion of girls and women in clinical trials;
• translate discoveries from research into clinical practice; and
• reinforce NIH requirements “to account for sex as a biological variable.”

“Women deserve strong research that helps them and their doctors answer key health questions they face at every stage of life,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, said in the release. “This new division will help close lingering evidence gaps, expand and maximize the impact of our research investments, and bring discoveries closer to patients.”

ACOG, the Women First Research Coalition and Society for Women’s Health Research supported the executive order in a joint statement, noting it complements their recently proposed framework urging for a $20 billion investment into women’s health research and care over 10 years.

“Robust and sustained funding is necessary to meaningfully advance research in women’s health and improve health outcomes in all phases of women’s lives,” the medical societies said.

In a statement sent to Healio, Stephanie Faubion, MD, MBA, medical director of The Menopause Society, said “menopause and its relationship to health across the lifespan” is a major gap in women's healthcare.

“Continued research is needed to better understand these conditions, strengthen the evidence base and translate scientific findings into approaches that improve prevention, diagnosis and care for women,” Faubion said.