A New Vision for Women’s Health Research: Transformative Change at the National Institutes of Health

By: Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Health and Medicine Division and Committee on the Assessment of NIH Research on Women’s Health

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Synopsis: Women make up over half of the U.S. population, yet research on women’s health conditions, including those that are female specific such as fibroids, more common among women such as anxiety, or affect women differently such cardiovascular disease, is severely lacking. Medical advances for women have lagged, in part due to a lack of understanding of basic sex-based differences in physiology. To address this, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Research in Women’s Health tasked the National Academies with convening a committee of experts to assess the state of women’s health research at NIH, identify critical knowledge gaps, assess the level of funding for women’s health research, and more. The resulting report outlines specific recommendations for NIH women’s health research priorities; training and education efforts to build, support, and maintain a robust women’s health research workforce; improving internal structures, systems and processes; soliciting, reviewing, and supporting women’s health research; and ensuring appropriate levels of funding.