Yale Researcher Leading National Women's Health Research Initiative; Recommendations Due

On November 13, 2023 the White House announced what was described as the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, with a directive to “deliver concrete recommendations to advance women’s health research within 45 days.” Initiative members were called on to propose recommendations “that the Biden-Harris Administration can take to improve how research on women’s health is conducted and maximize the Administration’s investments in women’s health research, including to address health disparities and inequities.”

The new effort was announced to be led by First Lady Jill Biden and the White House Gender Policy Council, and chaired by Dr. Carolyn Mazure, an leader in the field of women’s health research, selected to coordinate the Initiative on behalf of the Office of the First Lady and the Gender Policy Council.

Dr. Mazure came to the White House from the Yale School of Medicine, where she has served as the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor in Women’s Health Research, and Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology.

After three years at the National Institutes of Health and fellowship training at Yale, Dr. Mazure joined the Yale faculty as an active clinician and NIH-funded researcher. She created Women’s Health Research at Yale, the university’s interdisciplinary research center on the health of women, which studies a wide breadth of topics from cardiovascular disease to cancers. She holds a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University and did her fellowship and post-doctoral work at Yale School of Medicine.

In a statement released by the White House in November, it was noted that “despite making up more than half of the population, women have been understudied and underrepresented in health research for far too long. Research on women’s health is drastically underfunded, leading to significant research gaps, with serious consequences for the health of women across the country.”

“This lack of investment limits our understanding of conditions that are specific to women, predominantly affect women, or affect women differently. In order to give women and their health care providers the tools and information that they need to more effectively prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions – from rheumatoid arthritis to menopause to Alzheimer’s disease to cardiovascular disease to endometriosis – our nation must fundamentally change how we approach and fund women’s health research.”

In her comments that day, First Lady Jill Biden said “We have a clear goal: to fundamentally change how we approach and fund women’s health research.  We’ve hired a world-renowned women’s health researcher, Dr. Carolyn Mazure, to lead this groundbreaking effort, with the support of Jen Klein, Director of the Gender Policy Council.”

President Biden said “I have always believed in the power of research to save lives and to ensure that Americans get the high-quality health care they need. To achieve scientific breakthroughs and strengthen our ability to prevent, detect, and treat diseases, we have to be bold. That’s why today, we’re establishing a new White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research so that my Administration—from the National Institutes of Health to the Department of Defense—does everything we can to drive innovation in women’s health and close research gaps.”