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President Donald J. Trump, alongside First Lady Melania Trump, signed an executive order on Monday creating a Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a White House Women’s Health Task Force to close research gaps and modernise women's care.
“My Administration is committed to advancing women’s health and ensuring that medical research, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment reflect the highest quality scientific evidence, with the goal of improving health outcomes in all phases of life,” Trump said.
Speaking before the signing, Melania Trump called this “a transformative moment for women in America”.
“Previous generations fought for women's rights,” she continued. “Our generation will fight to discover the cure that will ensure that women can live their lives in health and to the fullest.”
The task force, which is meeting on the day the order was signed, is led by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
They are tasked with coordinating women’s health policy across federal agencies. The task force's role is to translate research into evidence-based healthcare, improve prevention and access to care throughout women's lives, and identify policy and regulatory reforms to improve health outcomes.
In the meantime, the Women's Health Division will be established within the NIH over the next 90 days.
It will coordinate and expand research into understudied women’s health conditions, improve the inclusion of women and girls in clinical trials, and accelerate the development of better diagnostics and treatments. It will also strengthen accountability for researchers to account for sex-based biological differences in their studies.
The goal, according to Melania Trump, is to improve women's health outcomes “in all phases of life,” using the advantages of new scientific discoveries, including super intelligence and advanced biotechnology and other therapies.
She outlined five priorities: directing research towards diseases that affect women “in a unique way”; using super intelligence to better understand women’s health and develop new treatments; speeding up access to new discoveries from labs to patients; ensuring access to all despite financial situation and addressing previously neglected conditions.