Latest news with #Women'sHealthInitiative
Forbes
15-05-2025
- Health
- Forbes
The Multibillion-Dollar Market Corporate America Is Missing Out On
Women's health sectors encompass a $360 billion ghost market in the U.S. Investors are overlooking a multibillion-dollar market, and no, it isn't crypto or AI. Amboy Street Ventures' recent 'Ghost Market Report' uncovered an untapped market for women's health, and it's worth $360 billion. According to Amboy Street Ventures—a venture capital fund focused on women's health—this multibillion-dollar figure accounts for 'ghost markets,' or markets that don't yet exist within the sphere of women's health. The report indicates several categories in which women's health remains underserved and notes that, if these areas had more investment and support, they'd be sectors worth billions of dollars. These categories comprise key healthcare needs for women, such as menopause, healthy aging, sexual health, menstruation, contraception, LGBTQ+ health, maternal health and fertility. This research not only identifies a major investment opportunity in women's health, but also a significant gap between the care women need and the services currently available to them. A Deloitte analysis found that, while women require nearly 10% more health care services than men, only about 4% of biopharma research and development spending goes toward conditions specific to women. And last month, a landmark Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study examining age-related factors for women's health was nearly defunded. If women's health lacks sufficient research, it may stymie the development of emerging market opportunities identified in Amboy Street Ventures' report. Recently announced tariffs could also slow progress for the prospective multibillion-dollar women's health market. An analysis from the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) found that the tariffs are predicted to increase the costs and shortages of medical supplies imported to the U.S. Consequently, tariffs may make medical supplies more expensive and harder to obtain for American businesses, including those focused on women's healthcare. They could also create barriers to profitable sectors in areas like menopause, fertility, aging, maternal health and other unmet market needs outlined in the 'Ghost Market Report.' Despite ongoing challenges, promising paths that promote stronger investment and progress in women's health are being forged. Last month, the Milken Institute announced in a press release that it will be launching a Women's Health Network to 'collate, elevate, and advance existing and new efforts across the women's health ecosystem.' Chaired by former first lady Jill Biden, the network aims to collaborate alongside research institutions, startups, businesses, investors, policymakers, philanthropists and communities to promote women's health initiatives. Efforts like those of the Milken Institute and Dr. Biden will be essential in creating more spaces, networks and investment opportunities within women's health. The multibillion-dollar women's health ghost markets could also offer opportunities for career mobility for women care workers. As previously reported, women make up the majority of workers in the healthcare sector. Yet women continue to be underrepresented in the industry's leadership roles, with men dominating the majority of the highest-paid healthcare jobs. By setting their sights on entrepreneurship and addressing unmet needs within women's health, women in healthcare can create opportunities for themselves to not only lead companies, but entire new sectors with incredible financial promise. Women's health isn't only an astronomical economic opportunity. As the 'Ghost Market Report' states, it's also 'a moral imperative.' Amboy Street Ventures' research makes clear that empowering women's health companies in underserved categories would not only create a multibillion-dollar market but would effectively 'create equitable systems of care' and 'improve health outcomes for millions.' Now is the time to create the accelerators, networks, funds and new businesses that support major areas still missing in women's healthcare. After all, investing in women's health goes beyond financial rewards, it supports the lives and wellbeing of half of the world's population.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'We Are Moving Backwards': 4 Leaders In Women's Health Care On Why Research Funding Is Essential
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." First came emails. Then a flurry of phone calls and emergency meetings. For many doctors, scientists, and other researchers, the news that their funding was being cut didn't feel real. Over the past few months, some people specializing in women's health issues across the country received jarring news: Their research projects, clinical trials, and even jobs in some cases would be grinding to a halt. Effective immediately. Just after taking office in January, President Donald Trump froze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, specifically flagging projects that included keywords like 'women,' 'women and underrepresented,' 'female,' 'females,' and 'feminism' in an effort to do away with 'woke' initiatives. As The New York Times explains, 'The presence of some terms was used to automatically flag for review some grant proposals and contracts that could conflict with Mr. Trump's executive orders.' This put essential studies looking into female conditions like pregnancy complications, endometriosis, and uterine fibroids, as well as Alzheimer's, heart disease, substance use disorder, and other issues, at risk. In response, a federal judge in Massachusetts recently ruled that the Trump administration could not limit National Institutes of Health funding that goes toward research at universities and academic medical centers, but the decision is likely to be appealed, per the Times. That same day, 16 states sued the Trump administration to restore this type of funding. Then, in late April, the administration cut funding to the largest women's health study in the U.S.—the Women's Health Initiative—before announcing just a few days later that they'd restore it. Notably, the researchers say they have not yet received any confirmation from the NIH that funding would indeed be restored. "This leaves us in a place of uncertainty," they write. The initiative, founded by the NIH and active for over three decades, focuses on researching conditions in postmenopausal women. It has been instrumental in our understanding of diseases like breast cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis. The data it produces not only helps develop key insights and therapeutics, but it's frequently used by early-career scientists in their training, according to Science. For most of history, women were not part of the medical conversation: Textbooks portrayed male body parts, medical students learned to look for symptomatologies that appear in men, menopause and childbirth were hush-hush topics, and, up until 1993, women were rarely included in clinical trials. Thankfully, the past few decades have seen science take some big steps forward. It's been able to do things like establish protocols for treating heart attacks in women, develop more effective (and less uncomfortable) forms of birth control, and even start to study the ways menopause can impact every part of women's bodies and lives. But there's still work to be done to close the gap. And right now, that crucial work is being stymied. Below, some powerhouses in the medical world share their thoughts on the future of women's health research, shedding light on the major chasms that funding cuts create in their fields of study and how to keep pushing forward—and finding the light—amidst these obstacles. Dr. Hayes is a cardiologist, a professor of medicine, and the founder of the Women's Heart Clinic at the Mayo Clinic. Around the mid-'90s, when I had just started practicing cardiology, the male patients I treated would respond to the tests I ordered—and the drugs I prescribed—the way I'd read about in scientific journals. But when I gave those same medications or did those same tests on women, it was different. Why was that? Because there had been no cardiovascular research performed on this entire population—women. I know now that I was caring for women with inexplicable symptoms from two conditions that didn't even have names back then. One is heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, which is the number one cause of heart failure in women, and the other is microvascular coronary disease, or microvascular dysfunction, which is a very common and disproportionate cause of chest pain and heart attack in women. Since then we've made a lot of progress in including women and other groups in research so that we can better care for them. So it's concerning when I hear about pulling back funding and support for sex- and gender-based research. It takes me back 30 years ago, when we were just starting to recognize our ignorance about sex and gender differences in disease and outcomes. We've made amazing progress, but honestly, we're still playing catch-up. We can't be stepping back now. Someone might say, 'Well, why do we need to study different groups? We could just treat everybody the same.' Studying all types of people—particularly around sex and gender—is not wasted money. It is a way to learn about things that might actually enhance care and our understanding of the disease—for both men and women. And it's good stewardship of health care dollars! We invest a lot of money in research, drugs, Medicare, and our insurance companies. And we personally invest a lot of money in medical tests and seeing doctors. If there was a higher likelihood that the prescribed drug or test I was being sent for had been tested on people like me, and I could trust the results, I would not only get better care but would ultimately save money. Understanding women's biology can also improve everyone's health. For instance, women have the capacity to do something called neovascularization—a fancy word for making new blood vessels—that men do not. (We know this because when they create a baby, their uterus goes from the size of a fist to this big thing, and a placenta grows.) So, when somebody has a blocked artery and we can't fix it with a stent or a bypass, it's tempting to say, 'What if we put some stem cells down in there to grow some more vessels?' In other words, what if we were able to discover the secret sauce that made women better at growing new blood vessels, which might help the heart or other organs in other people too? Wouldn't it be worth studying women? That's why I worry quite a bit. I worry about lack of funding for current research. I worry about the chilling effect on the scientific workforce, particularly those who are early in their careers. People are going to need jobs to support their families, and they will go into another industry or sector altogether if they can't get funding. We may be losing this little slice of really important, talented people—a brain trust—that will take us way more than four to eight years to get back. I worry we're going to lose even more ground and may never catch up. The foundational, scientific reasons for us to explore sex and gender medicine—and particularly women's health—have not changed. For instance, it's pretty impossible to talk about studying heart failure with preserved ejection fraction without at least talking about sex differences, which are key to our understanding of the condition. There's a lot of hand-wringing and a lot of people who are really sad, disappointed, and possibly checked out for many, many reasons right now. I don't blame them. I feel their pain. I also feel that those of us who have a little more history, who are a little more established, can help carry the torch forward while others are laying low. As hard as that might be, the young researchers and students going into women's health may need to sit back and watch and learn from those of us with experience and privilege while we fight these regressive policies and funding rollbacks. As Eldrin Lewis, MD, a renowned cardiologist and researcher at Stanford, said during a recent panel at the American College of Cardiology conference, 'The pride must protect its lion cubs.' So for now, focus on supporting each other. Don't burn bridges or networks. Talk about the projects that you're going to do when there's a future funding opportunity. Learn something.I think health is the most nonpolitical thing you could ever discuss. It really shouldn't be political to know how to take care of everyone. I never thought we'd be where we are right now. Everybody deserves good care, good outcomes, and good health. We need to know—for both men and women—what works. Yet the threat to grants has already started. Many of my colleagues have already received notices saying their research is no longer funded. Literally, if your grant says 'woman' in it, there's a high probability that the government might pull its funding. It's forcing academics and researchers to play a word game. Many of my colleagues who routinely apply for grants and funding have removed the word 'woman' from their proposals, even when they're studying something very sex-specific. Everyone is scrambling right now. It's too early to know where the dust is going to settle, but what we can say is this: If we don't study women, which we haven't in a meaningful way for many, many, many, many, many decades, we will remain ill-equipped to take care of more than 50 percent of the population. We know a lot about men's hearts because we have studied them. But until recently, we had a lack of knowledge about how best to care for women, and specifically their hearts. I want to make sure the medications that women are given actually work for them. In the past, we've learned only after a medication has been released that it doesn't work as well in women or causes a side effect. Devices are highly understudied in women. Yet we implant them in women and then are surprised when they bleed or have a rupture or a complication. We shouldn't want that for anyone. I don't want it for men. I don't want it for women. We need to know about women and men so that we can best treat them in a personalized way. We need to be able to treat people appropriately. Health care is a human right, and that's the way that I look at medicine. It's why I went into this of the reasons I wanted to become a doctor was because I loved the ever-changing aspect of it—of being a perpetual learner. And so many things have changed since I graduated from medical school over 20 years ago. When I was in residency, I had never done a robotic (laparoscopic) surgery before. That's 90 percent of the surgery that I do now. The way we treat cancer now is so vastly different. We're able to use genetics. As I'm reading a study, seeing that a medication or treatment was looked at across a wide array of individuals and that the results are not just applicable to one group is really important information. It gives me more meaningful insight about that intervention or disease process. There are so many layers to how these funding and grant cuts impact people. At a higher level, doctors won't be able to find new and novel treatments, equipment, or instruments. Then there are also people at the ground level wondering if their access will be impacted. Are patients going to be able to access much-needed treatment? And who is the gatekeeper for these treatments? Who is saying whether something is efficacious, if it's needed, whether it's going to be covered by insurance? We are moving backwards, which is hard to fathom. I never thought this would happen in science and medicine. These funding freezes are hard for many of us to wrap our minds around—to now look at your grant proposals and papers and feel afraid to put things in them that fundamentally should be there? Depending on the area of research, a lot of people are also questioning their specialty or research focus, which is really heartbreaking to me. But hardship and adversity always teach us things and make us stronger and more resilient. I think this is making people realize the impact of their vote. It's making people want to be more informed and more engaged. There's no way you advance medicine if you don't study women's health issues. There's no way you can advance the care of human beings without research and without the ability to fund the dynamic minds that can create new things and find new treatments. Yes, it's about money, but it's also about stimulating new, innovative, and novel ideas, bringing inquisitive, brilliant people together, through research groups, government entities, conferences, and publications. This is how grant funding advances modern medicine and science, by transforming mystical ideas to medical the fact that women have been historically understudied and underrepresented in research, there's been tremendous progress—meaningful progress—on advancing the health of women through research in the last two decades. This is made possible, in part, because universities all over the nation have received federal funds to pursue important conditions that women experience, ranging from heart attack to cancers to endometriosis to maternal mortality to autoimmune disorders to Alzheimer's disease. The list goes on. Our goal is to advance everyone's health through science. Right now, women in our country are more likely to suffer chronic and co-occurring disorders, so a primary focus needs to be how we can improve those statistics and, with that, improve women's lives and advance the lives of everyone in the nation. In the work that we have done over the last year and a half through the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research, it's been clear that federal funding plays a key role in generating important discoveries that will have practical benefit in people's lives. We also worked very intentionally to ensure that contemporary research involves the private sector, which includes philanthropy, industry, and foundations across the nation. It was always our hope—and reflected in our effort—that the nation would unite behind improving the health of women, because as women's health improves, families' health improves, and the nation thrives. Reduced funding from the federal government for health research will affect everyone's health: women and men and children. The United States has built the most productive system of health research in the world, and the goal of all of that research is to treat disorders and promote health. Abrupt and broad reduction in federal money for health research will have an adverse impact on everyone. And it calls into question what the structure of research will look like in our country and how we can train the next generation of scientists to uncover the causes of illness and mechanisms to treat those illnesses. You Might Also Like Jennifer Garner Swears By This Retinol Eye Cream These New Kicks Will Help You Smash Your Cross-Training Goals
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The Women's Health Initiative has shaped women's health for over 30 years, but its future is uncertain
Women make up more than 50% of the population, yet before the 1990s they were largely excluded from health and medical research studies. To try to help correct this imbalance, in 1991 the National Institutes of Health launched a massive, long-term study called the Women's Health Initiative, which is still running today. It is the largest, longest and most comprehensive study on women's health ever conducted in the U.S. It also is one of the most productive studies in history, with more than 2,400 published scientific papers in leading medical journals. On April 20, 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services told the study's lead investigators it plans to terminate much of the program's funding and discontinue its regional center contracts. On April 24, after pushback from the medical community, HHS officials said the funding had been reinstated. But the reversal was never officially confirmed, so the study's lead investigators – including me – remain concerned about its future. I am a public health researcher who has studied chronic disease prevention in women for nearly 40 years. I have been centrally involved with the Women's Health Initiative since its inception and currently co-direct one of its four regional centers at the University at Buffalo. The project's findings have shaped clinical practice, prevention strategies and public health policies across the U.S. and the world, particularly for older women. In my view, its loss would be a devastating blow to women's health. The Women's Health Initiative was established in response to a growing realization that very little medical research existed to inform health care that was specifically relevant to women. In the U.S. in the 1970s, for example, almost 40% of postmenopausal women were taking estrogen, but no large clinical trials had studied the risks and benefits. In 1985 an NIH task force outlined the need for long-term research on women's health. Launched by Bernadine Healy, the first woman to serve as director of the NIH, the Women's Health Initiative aimed to study ways to prevent heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis. Between 1993 and 1998, the project enrolled 161,808 postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79 to participate in four randomized clinical trials. Two of them investigated how menopausal hormone therapy affects the risk of heart disease, breast cancer, hip fractures and cognition. Another examined the effects of a low-fat, high-fiber diet on breast and colorectal cancers as well as heart disease. The fourth looked at whether taking calcium plus vitamin D supplements helps prevent hip fractures and colorectal cancer. Women could participate in just one or in multiple trials. More than 90,000 also took part in a long-term observational study that used medical records and surveys to probe the link between risk factors and disease outcomes over time. Some of the most important findings from the Women's Health Initiative addressed the effects of menopausal hormone therapy. The hormone therapy trial testing a combination of estrogen and progesterone was set to run until 2005. However, it was terminated early, in 2002, when results showed an increased risk in heart disease, stroke, blood clotting disorders and breast cancer, as well as cognitive decline and dementia. The trial of estrogen alone also raised safety concerns, though both types of therapy reduced the risk of bone fractures. After these findings were reported, menopausal hormone therapy prescriptions dropped sharply in the U.S. and worldwide. One study estimated that the decreased use of estrogen and progesterone therapy between 2002 and 2012 prevented as many as 126,000 breast cancer cases and 76,000 cardiovascular disease cases – and saved the U.S. an estimated US$35 billion in direct medical costs. Reanalyses of data from these studies over the past decade have provided a more nuanced clinical picture for safely using menopausal hormone therapy. They showed that the timing of treatment matters, and that when taken before age 60 or within 10 years of menopause, hormones have more limited risk. Although the Women's Health Initiative's four original clinical trials ended by 2005, researchers have continued to follow participants, collect new data and launch spinoff studies that shape health recommendations for women over 65. Almost a decade ago, for example, research at my institution and others found in a study of 6,500 women ages 63 to 99 that just 30 minutes of low to moderate physical activity was enough to significantly boost their health. The study led to changes in national public health guidelines. Subsequent studies are continuing to explore how physical activity affects aging and whether being less sedentary can protect women against heart disease. Bone health and preventing fractures have also been a major focus of the Women's Health Initiative, with research helping to establish guidelines for osteoporosis screening and investigating the link between dietary protein intake and bone health. One of the Women's Health Initiative's biggest yields is its vast repository of health data collected annually from tens of thousands of women over more than 30 years. The data consists of survey responses on topics such as diet, physical activity and family history; information on major health outcomes such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and cause of death, verified using medical records; and a trove of biological samples, including 5 million blood vials and genetic information from 50,000 participants. Any researcher can access this repository to explore associations between blood biomarkers, disease outcomes, genes, lifestyle factors and other health features. More than 300 such studies are investigating health outcomes related to stroke, cancer, diabetes, eye diseases, mental health, physical frailty and more. Thirty are currently running. In addition to data amassed by the Women's Health Initiative until now, about 42,000 participants from all 50 states, now ages 78 to 108, are still actively contributing to the study. This cohort is a rare treasure: Very few studies have collected such detailed, long-term information on a broad group of women of this age. Meanwhile, the demographic of older women is growing quickly. Continuing to shed light on aging, disease risk and prevention in this population is vital. The questions guiding the project's ongoing and planned research directly address the chronic diseases that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced as national priorities. So I hope that the Women's Health Initiative can continue to generate discoveries that support women's health well into the future. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jean Wactawski-Wende, University at Buffalo Read more: Hormone therapy may cut cardiovascular risk in younger menopausal women Menopause treatments can help with hot flashes and other symptoms – but many people aren't aware of the latest advances Women's health is better when women have more control in their society Jean Wactawski-Wende receives funding from the NIH.
The Hill
25-04-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Trump officials reverse course, restore funding for women's health study
The study, called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), was launched by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1991 to learn about women's specific health needs since medical studies before then used mainly men. WHI researchers at the initiative's four regional centers were notified this week that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would be terminating their contracts in September. The White House ordered HHS in early April to cut contract spending by 35 percent to make sure the department was using its funding efficiently. But HHS's decision to end the decades-old initiative's financial backing quickly received pushback from researchers and lawmakers alike. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted to X to say the reports of the initiative's funding freeze were 'fake news' and that WHI would continue to be financed by the department. 'We are not terminating the study. NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has himself used this study in his own research. We all recognize that this project is mission critical for women's health,' he wrote on X. An HHS spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that the department is currently working on restoring funding to the study so that its 'essential research' not be interrupted. 'NIH remains deeply committed to advancing public health through rigorous gold standard research and we are taking immediate steps to ensure the continuity of these studies,' the spokesperson said. More than 160,000 women signed up to take part in WHI's clinical studies in the mid-90s and there are more than 40,000 women who have taken part in the study initiative for decades. WHI's clinical studies have resulted in better treatment for women with conditions like cardiovascular disease and breast cancer.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump administration restores funding for major women's health study
The Trump administration has reversed course and restored financial support for a decades-old study on women's health. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the study, called the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), in the early 1990s to learn about women's health needs since most medical studies had been conducted on men. WHI researchers were notified earlier this week that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) planned to terminate contracts in September with the initiative's four regional centers in California, New York, Ohio and North Carolina. The Trump administration chose to cut the initiative's funding because the National Institutes of Health 'initially exceeded its internal target for contract reductions,' HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told NPR. The White House ordered the HHS earlier this month to cut 35 percent of its spending on contracts to ensure that the agency's funding is being used efficiently. The move quickly alarmed the scientific community and elected officials with many calling for the administration to reverse its decisions. 'If a program that costs $10 million a year has saved an estimated $35.2 billion in medical costs and improved the healthcare and lives of post-menopause women, it is not wasteful,' New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R) posted on social platform X. 'This decision should be reversed and a more thoughtful and deliberate approach to identifying savings must be implemented,' she continued. The initiative's clinical studies have resulted in more effective treatment for diseases like breast cancer and cardiovascular disease for women, according to the initiative's website. More than 160,000 women were enrolled in the WHI's studies in the mid-1990s and more than 40,000 are still participating in them. The HHS decided to renew its support for the decades-old study series late Thursday. And HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called reports on the agency's decision to withdraw funding for the initiative 'fake news.' 'We are not terminating the study. NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has himself used this study in his own research. We all recognize that this project is mission critical for women's health,' he wrote on X. An HHS spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that the agency is working to fully restore funding for the WHI and its 'essential research efforts.' 'NIH remains deeply committed to advancing public health through rigorous gold standard research and we are taking immediate steps to ensure the continuity of these studies,' the spokesperson wrote to The Hill. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
