President Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order to drastically expand government initiatives focused on women’s health, telling supporters at the White House such a measure was overdue.
“Think of all the breakthroughs we’ve made in medicine across the board. But women have not been the focus. Research has taken much too long to get to y’all,” Biden said at an event to mark Women’s History Month.
The president signed an executive order directing relevant agencies to strengthen research and data standards on women’s health with the purpose of better leveraging federal funding. It also directs agencies to prioritize funding for women’s health research and encourage innovation.
The order directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to spend $200 million on women’s health research, and it directed the Office of Management and Budget and the Gender Policy Council to assess gaps in federal funding for women’s health and identify potential changes.
Biden was joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Harris and women’s health advocate Maria Shriver at Tuesday’s signing.
“We simply don’t know enough about how to prevent, detect, and treat the conditions that affect women uniquely, disproportionately, or differently,” first lady Jill Biden said. “And that’s the result of a choice: Because, for decades, ‘business as usual’ has meant understudying and underfunding research on women’s health. Your president believes this is unacceptable.”
The president’s executive order comes roughly a month after the first lady announced $100 million in federal funding for research and development into women’s health through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H.
Biden at Tuesday’s reception touted his administration’s broader efforts to support women, pointing to the diversity of his administration and the appointment of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, as well as the lowest unemployment rate for women in several years.
This story was updated at 11:46 a.m.