President Joe Biden signed an executive order Monday aimed at advancing the study of women’s health by strengthening data collection and providing better funding opportunities for biomedical research while chiding Republicans for having “no clue about the power of women” but saying they’re “about to find out” come November’s election.
Women’s health has long been underfunded and understudied. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the federal government mandated women be included in federally funded medical research; for most of medical history, though, scientific study was based almost entirely on men.
“We still know too little about how to effectively prevent, diagnose and treat a wide array of health conditions in women,” said Dr. Carolyn Mazure, the head of the White House initiative on women’s health.
Today, research often fails to properly track differences between women and men, and does not represent women equally particularly for illnesses more common to them — which Biden suggested his order would help change.
I knew women’s health was not great, but medicine isn’t like on TV and a lot of it is still a crapshoot, but once I was engrossed in the world of maternity I found that women’s health is abysmal.