A $20 billion, 10-year federal investment could close the gap in women’s health research and care. That’s the goal of the newly launched National Strategy to Close the Women’s Health Gap, unveiled July 15, 2026, by the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Society for Women’s Health Research, and the Women First Research Coalition.
Women comprise more than half the US population, yet women’s health is still understudied and underserved. The HHS initially planned to defund the Women’s Health Initiative regional centers, but the decision was reversed.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, stated that these studies represent critical contributions to the understanding of women’s health.
WHI is the largest women’s health study in US history, running since 1991, and has globally influenced clinical practice and public health policy.
The estrogen plus progestin hormone therapy trial led to the prevention of an estimated 126,000 breast cancer cases and 76,000 cardiovascular disease cases over a decade, saving more than $35 billion in medical costs.
JoAnn Manson, MD, MPH, DrPH, a principal investigator of the WHI, said the research has improved the health of older women and advanced health aging in the overall population.
Women remain underrepresented in heart disease trials, such as trials for arrhythmia, coronary heart disease, and heart failure.
In 1977, the FDA issued guidelines deterring the participation of women of reproductive age in clinical trials, due to concerns about harm to fetuses.
The National Institutes of Health began to include women in federally funded research in the 1990s, but the gap is still prevalent, with only 26% of participants in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction trials being women.
The underrepresentation in trial data carries over into how women’s symptoms are treated in the exam room, where misdiagnosis remains common.
Martha Gulati, MD, director of the Davis Women’s Heart Center, said women’s symptoms in the cardiology world are often discounted, and they may be misdiagnosed with other conditions.
For women affected by these gaps in research and care, the impact is deeply personal, as they are more likely to have their symptoms dismissed and less likely to receive timely and effective treatment.
The National Strategy to Close the Women’s Health Gap aims to bring equitable access, coverage, and treatment to women’s health care, as women face higher annual out-of-pocket costs and live 25% of their lives in poorer health compared with men.
The $20 billion, 10-year investment is divided into 5 priority areas: research and innovation, workforce, data infrastructure, regulatory coordination, and public awareness.
Including women in clinical trials is essential to understanding how diseases affect women differently, according to the National Institutes of Health, and efforts have been made to increase participation, but more work needs to be done to address existing gaps.
They must be really engaged and thoughtful about how to make sure women have the opportunity to participate in research studies, which is essential for understanding how diseases affect women differently, and for developing effective treatments, such as those related to health care and health impacts, and also considering partnerships like the community partnership to improve health outcomes.
