For decades, knowledge gaps in women’s health research have left patients and clinicians with more unanswered questions and fewer medical breakthroughs, according to a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Society pays a price for this gap, the report stated, and addressing it will require $15.7 billion in new funding from Congress over the next 5 years.
Such an investment will help the National Institutes of Health (NIH) establish a new institute dedicated to women’s health, expand the field’s workforce, and support interdisciplinary women’s health and sex differences research throughout the 27 existing institutes and centers.
“There’s a dearth of studies for most female-specific conditions, leaving clinicians and patients without a path forward for diagnosis and treatment,” said Sheila Burke, BSN, MPA, cochair of the study committee and chair of the government relations and public policy department at the law firm Baker Donelson.