The Biden administration will dedicate $100 million in new funding toward research and development related to women’s health, first lady Jill Biden announced late last month at a Cambridge, Massachusetts, event.
“We are going to invest in your discoveries early, when private companies may not be willing to take the risk,” Biden said in a speech on Feb. 21. “We are going to give women’s health researchers and startups the funding they need to grow and help them bring ideas to market – and to the women who need them most.”
The money will go toward the first-ever mission of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, an effort launched in November and led by the Office of the First Lady and the White House Gender Policy Council. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will facilitate the research as part of its “‘Sprint for Women’s Health.”
In 2022 President Biden created ARPHA-H, a federal organization within the National Institute of Health, to deliver his promises from his candidacy to further public health.
ARPA-H is focused on accelerating better health using progressive biomedical and health research. President Biden has entrusted this agency to fund and curate programs to further women’s health research.
Under the Department of Health and Human Services, ARPA-H will be funding and working directly with scientists and researchers across the nation to launch this change. By the end of Biden’s presidency, the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research is expected to make innovative and proactive discoveries for women’s health.
With the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, the Biden administration will recruit executive departments and agencies across the federal government to contribute to the investment and allocation of resources for research. Then, each executive department and agency recruited will deliver recommendations to the Office of the First Lady and the Gender Policy Council to effectively address health disparities and inequities in women’s health data.
Further, the initiative will target high-priority gaps in research including areas such as cancer, menopause, heart attacks, mental illness, and will partner with scientific, private sector, and philanthropic communities to drive innovation in the field of women’s health.
