Beyond the Ballot: Breaking Down Barriers in Women's Health Research

[00:00:22] Welcome to Beyond The Paper Gown. I'm your host, Dr. Mitzi Krockover. You know, when I created this podcast, I had a vision to shine a light on the many factors that shape our health and well-being. Think about it. Our physical conditions, the differences between men and women's health, the impact of research or lack thereof, and even our social and environmental circumstances. They're all interconnected and they all play a crucial role in our health.

[00:00:52] And our overall health. But there's one factor that ties all of these together. Policy. It's the invisible hand that guides research priorities, healthcare access, and even our daily environments. That's why we launched a special series of webinars called Beyond The Ballot to take a look into how policy shapes women's health. This podcast and others that will follow are taken from those webinars, which are a collaboration between Beyond The Paper Gown and the

[00:01:22] G2G Consulting, the Black Women's Health Imperative and Healthy Women. And I also want to thank our gold sponsor, Procter & Gamble and our silver sponsor, Materna Health for helping to make this series possible.

[00:01:35] Today's expert panel will explore the intricate dance between health research, innovation, and policy in women's health. The panel will uncover the roadblocks that have been holding us back, but also shine a light on promising opportunities that lie ahead. You'll also hear how these efforts

[00:01:52] can drive meaningful and positive change, not only in the health of women, but for everyone. So let's get started. Our first panel is going to connect the dots between research on women's health and innovation, and how policy can help or hinder progress in these areas. Our moderator is Rachel Braun-Schurl, managing partner and co-founder of Spark Solutions for Growth, a strategic and marketing consultancy.

[00:02:30] She's an entrepreneur herself and has worked with many women's health companies to navigate opportunities as well as the challenges in this sector. Rachel.

[00:02:42] Hi, it's great to be here. Thank you so much, Mitzi. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm also thrilled to be part of this broader women's health community. I'm going to give short introductions to all the panelists. Please feel free to dig into their very fascinating backgrounds.

[00:02:59] And you'll see as we go through why we're so excited to have them here. As Mitzi said, my name is Rachel Braun-Schurl. I've been a business builder, a marketing strategist, an author and a speaker, as well as an investor in the space for a long time, working with companies anywhere from menstruation through menopause.

[00:03:18] And really the objective that I focus on is how do you get their products and services into the hands of the people who buy them, need them, use them, prescribe them, pay for them.

[00:03:28] So today we're discussing the barriers to women's health innovation, and there are many barriers, but we've also made significant progress.

[00:03:34] And I wanted to just level set with some basic facts. So it has been over two years since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

[00:03:43] It's been 30 years since women were required to be included in National Institutes of Health Clinical Trials.

[00:03:49] And the lack of data we'll discuss has enormous implications for what we know about women's health.

[00:03:54] It's been eight years since sex was required to be included in NIH-funded studies as a variable.

[00:04:01] And one of the reasons that women spend more in health care is that it often takes longer to diagnose women.

[00:04:08] And studies show that women experience misdiagnosis at much higher rates than men, which I don't think will be surprising to anybody who's been paying attention.

[00:04:16] But what we are seeing, there are so many high points.

[00:04:19] The five-year survival rate for localized breast cancer is 99%.

[00:04:23] Women under 35 undergoing IVF have over a 50% chance of treatment resulting in a live birth.

[00:04:31] BC-backed women's health companies have at least 76% have at least one female founder.

[00:04:37] And a BCG study found that women founders generate twice as much revenue per funding dollar as men.

[00:04:44] So that's all great.

[00:04:46] So in the context of tremendous progress, we know that disparities continue to exist.

[00:04:51] And I'm delighted to have a panel of brilliant experts, each of whom will provide insights on the topic from their own perspective.

[00:04:58] And again, I will shorten their incredible resumes and encourage you to look further.

[00:05:04] First is Michelle Oyen.

[00:05:05] She brings a broad material science mechanical, I'm sorry, is an associate professor at Washington University at St. Louis,

[00:05:11] and has researched and advocated for engineering methodologies within maternal health and women's health for over 25 years.

[00:05:18] Welcome, Michelle.

[00:05:19] Thank you.

[00:05:21] Dr. Michele Elvitz is a clinically trained OB-GYN and maternal fetal medicine specialist.

[00:05:26] As the dean of the women's health research at the Icahn School of Medicine

[00:05:30] and the inaugural director of the Women's Biomedical Research Institute,

[00:05:34] she focuses on the advancement of age-specific biology that drives health and diseases for women across their life course

[00:05:42] and understanding that in more detail.

[00:05:45] Welcome, Michele.

[00:05:46] Thank you.

[00:05:47] Katie Schubert.

[00:05:48] Katie is the president and CEO of the Society for Women's Health Research, SWHR, since 2020.

[00:05:54] The organization is dedicated to advancing women's health through science, policy, and education

[00:06:00] while promoting research on sex differences with its vision to make women's health mainstream.

[00:06:06] So I think for those of you listening, you'll see that we have just a power panel of people who can really help us get smarter.

[00:06:14] So let's start with the NIH, since so much of the funding and so much of the research that we talk about is connected to the NIH.

[00:06:23] So Michele, I'll start with you.

[00:06:25] From your perspective, what has the NIH's role been in limiting to or contributing to meaningful advancement in women's health?

[00:06:33] And I know that's a big question, but we have a lot of big questions in only 20 minutes.

[00:06:38] Big question.

[00:06:39] So first, let me just say that NIH has been tremendous in elevating science and research for across the fields, including women's health.

[00:06:45] And I've been very fortunate to have NIH funding to work on maternal and reproductive health.

[00:06:51] In saying that and acknowledging the tremendous output that NIH has done, I think it is not moved with the times.

[00:07:01] And I think there's been limitations in focusing maybe for more than just the most recent decade, but for decades,

[00:07:08] in how to amplify women's health, how to advance discovery, and really how to apply innovation.

[00:07:13] And I don't think it's just women's health.

[00:07:16] I think the current NIH structure limits the ability to do things in a rapid and innovative way by the way we set up two- and five-year grants.

[00:07:25] For women's health specifically, I think the fact, and many people I work with have heard me say this,

[00:07:32] the fact that the majority of women's health is under an institute that doesn't have the name woman in it is problematic,

[00:07:39] especially considering NICHD gets 8% of all funding and women's health is 30% of that 8%.

[00:07:44] You keep putting the numbers and you'll see that there's really a small amount being spent on women's health.

[00:07:49] A great report put out by the Office of Women's Health Research at NIH actually goes into deep details on this.

[00:07:56] And some of what we know, we actually don't know because we are not recording women's specific diseases, including some of menopause.

[00:08:04] And so there is just this totality of lack of attention on women's health and for what we talk about, female and sex-specific biology, across the life course and how to advance it.

[00:08:18] And I think NIH has a great opportunity to really make a difference right now, and I hope we see that happen.

[00:08:26] And one of the things you mentioned is sort of the things that we left out in the past continue to get in our way.

[00:08:33] So if we don't have the history, we don't have the data, we don't have the research, it makes everything moving forward more difficult.

[00:08:40] Not to say that we haven't made progress and that we can't, but we were building a house on a somewhat weaker foundation.

[00:08:46] Katie, in this context where we're talking about the NIH, many of us were excited when we heard about the announcement of the White House Initiative on Women's Health and Federal Funding for Women's Health Research.

[00:08:59] Can you give just a brief overview of what those initiatives mean and what the real implications are in terms of what we might be able to accomplish with these initiatives in place in terms of finding innovative solutions for women's health?

[00:09:14] Yeah, great question.

[00:09:15] I think the White House Initiative itself is super exciting for a number of reasons, one of which is exactly what Dr. Elowitz was saying, right?

[00:09:24] How do we make sure that we're prioritizing women's health research across federal agencies and within the private sector to make sure that we're getting to those research questions that have gone unanswered or underfunded for decades?

[00:09:37] And so this was the first time that we saw this elevated issue at this level.

[00:09:43] No president has had an executive order like this or an initiative like this with great thanks to Dr. Biden for really pushing the issue, I think, with him.

[00:09:53] But really what it did was ask the federal agencies to tell them where are they doing the research and where could they be doing better?

[00:10:01] And so while we wait a little bit, I think, for some of those answers from them, there were a few things that they did in the meantime.

[00:10:09] The first thing they did was release $100 million out of ARPA-H.

[00:10:14] So really looking at dedicated funding for high-risk, high-reward research in women's health.

[00:10:19] They also earmarked, if you will, $200 million out of this coming year's budget across the NIH.

[00:10:27] So every institute pitched in to make sure that they're contributing to this ability to fund women's health research.

[00:10:34] The president also called on Congress.

[00:10:36] He made a huge call at the State of the Union for $12 billion of investment to really dedicate, again, to women's health research across the lifespan.

[00:10:46] That funding, I think, is going to be really critical as we fight for it.

[00:10:51] It's not real just yet.

[00:10:53] I think Congress has to appropriate that.

[00:10:55] So that's one thing as folks are thinking about how they're voting and their candidates, really thinking about is this something that potentially members of Congress would vote to increase funding for?

[00:11:07] So I think this is a really good opportunity, and there's a lot of momentum, particularly as we think about how high-profile this topic has become.

[00:11:17] So many more people are talking about it than we all have been for many decades.

[00:11:21] New people are coming out of the woodwork, so we really need to leverage that.

[00:11:24] But it was very exciting to see.

[00:11:26] So just to be clear, the $12 billion is conceptual, theoretical at this point, and there are several hundred million that are real and therefore the spending to invest in real innovation in women's research.

[00:11:39] That's exactly right.

[00:11:41] Okay.

[00:11:41] So we're in this space all the time.

[00:11:44] I'm sure many of the folks listening spend more than the average amount of time reading and learning about women's health.

[00:11:50] We hear about the surge.

[00:11:52] We hear about menopause.

[00:11:54] We joke that the New York Times apparently discovered menopause two years ago, despite that it's been around for quite a long time.

[00:12:01] So we've seen what feels like a surge in interest in activity and funding.

[00:12:07] Michelle, you have described some of the work that we see as, I love this expression because it just really creates a good visual, as femtech band-aids.

[00:12:16] What do you mean by that phrase, and what concerns does it convey?

[00:12:20] Okay.

[00:12:21] So my concern with a lot of what's going on right now is that it's not getting at the underlying mechanisms of where we get the problems.

[00:12:29] So we have a lot of wearables and end-user sort of things that are designed at rapid diagnosis and some of those things.

[00:12:40] That's great.

[00:12:41] Okay.

[00:12:41] So I think, first of all, my bottom line, we need all of it, right?

[00:12:44] We need to have those things.

[00:12:46] But more importantly, we need to have underlying understanding.

[00:12:49] And what's really been missing in this field is that underlying understanding.

[00:12:54] And so if we don't have that underlying understanding, trying to make new wearable devices to diagnose something is going to be based on a very sandy foundation.

[00:13:03] And so I think that's my big concern is that we need that level of the billions of dollars in spending to get to the research that gives us that underlying understanding so that we can then push products into the market with femtech.

[00:13:17] And so, as I said, we need both, but we can't just do the femtech side of it and the end-user side of product development without having the underlying understanding.

[00:13:29] And the underlying understanding covers more than just what NIH has previously funded.

[00:13:34] It's interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary.

[00:13:37] It has to have a whole world of background here.

[00:13:40] And I say that, of course, as somebody who's trained in engineering, who works in women's health, which always causes people to look kind of funny at me.

[00:13:47] Like, wait, what?

[00:13:50] Thank you so much.

[00:13:51] And I just want to be clear.

[00:13:52] We use the word femtech.

[00:13:54] You can ask 100 people and get 150 different definitions.

[00:13:58] There are some things that are considered femtech that are trying to get to the root cause and early diagnosis of important diseases.

[00:14:06] And there are some that are the other end of the spectrum that might just treat symptoms.

[00:14:12] But as Michelle said, we need them all.

[00:14:14] Katie, how would you characterize the increased interest?

[00:14:17] You probably see it in your role as much as anybody.

[00:14:20] Are there limitations of this surge?

[00:14:23] And what are some of the benefits?

[00:14:25] Yeah.

[00:14:26] So I think exactly, to Michelle's point, I'd give that a plus 100 if we're building on a foundation of not having data already or lengthy diagnosis.

[00:14:37] Even if you're getting this information from wearables or other types of, you know, digital technologies, your clinician may not know what to do with that.

[00:14:46] And so that really, I think, underscores the need to invest in the research so that we can then get the answers.

[00:14:51] With that said, I think it's still an opportunity, right?

[00:14:54] We have many more people talking about this topic.

[00:14:58] We have many more people interested in investing in it, which we did not have before.

[00:15:02] And so I think that's a huge opportunity here for us.

[00:15:05] I think one of the challenges or limitations really comes back to this idea that women's health is not and should not be a niche market.

[00:15:13] And so it shouldn't be a quote unquote special thing to invest in.

[00:15:17] And, you know, when we talk about making women's health mainstream at SWHR, this is what we mean.

[00:15:22] We need it to be fully baked into the system because otherwise it's just going to be something that people will think of as like, oh, that's just a special thing for ladies.

[00:15:30] Right. And that's not what we're talking about or getting at.

[00:15:33] We're really trying to make sure we're improving and optimizing the health and well-being across the health span.

[00:15:39] I think there are ways to leverage Femtech and the conversation surrounding it and current investment in it to do that.

[00:15:45] I just would urge anyone thinking about it to keep that in mind, that it's really women and ourselves are a huge consumer market, too.

[00:15:54] So really keeping that in mind, I think, will be critical.

[00:15:57] One of the examples I tend to use when people say it's a niche market, if you think about menopause, one out of every two people on the planet will go through it.

[00:16:04] They have up to three or four dozen symptoms and it lasts seven to 10 years.

[00:16:09] When I do that math, that has the opportunity to be the biggest market that exists.

[00:16:15] But it also has to do with the conversation about how we're defining women's health.

[00:16:20] And now we are including things that differentially or primarily affect women, but are not typically seen as women's health diseases like Alzheimer's and autoimmune diseases.

[00:16:31] So the conversation is advancing. We get to the all-important money.

[00:16:37] Michal, in an ideal world, where are the places you would place your bets?

[00:16:41] Where would you spend the money to really drive innovation and advance women's health?

[00:16:47] And I know there are probably dozens we could spend a week on answering this question.

[00:16:52] But what are your priorities as you look at where the funding could most usefully be spent?

[00:16:59] So let me first add that while acute symptoms of menopause may be six or seven years, it's affecting you for the next 50 years.

[00:17:06] So when we talk a niche market, not so niche.

[00:17:09] Priorities.

[00:17:10] So it's really hard to say what is the biggest priority.

[00:17:14] I think I'm going to echo what Michelle says and people who know me are going to.

[00:17:17] If we understood the biology of female-specific health and disease, we would elevate so many different areas.

[00:17:25] Right?

[00:17:25] There's just this funnel lack of knowledge that we don't.

[00:17:29] There was a great paper published in Nature of Medicine today about testosterone in the immune system in transgender people.

[00:17:35] That itself, that's something that simple to understand how hormones change our immune function,

[00:17:42] what affect our impact on Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, menopause, infertility, pregnancy outcomes.

[00:17:48] So this basic biology has to go across the themes and will elevate all of them.

[00:17:55] I think considering the burden on the population, I think it's hard not to think about menopause or ovarian aging or female-specific aging across the life course.

[00:18:03] I think the way that we elevate priorities are two.

[00:18:06] I think the NIH absolutely needs the Institutes of Women's Health, and that's where the $12 billion should go.

[00:18:11] And then we don't have to be worried about selecting our top three priorities.

[00:18:15] I would say outside of NIH, if we want to do, we need other people investing and funding and thinking about this.

[00:18:21] And we need to change the paradigm of five-year grants.

[00:18:24] We need to think about high risk and high reward if we're going to make dramatic changes in women's health the same way we did when we approached COVID-19.

[00:18:32] And I think if we took that same lens and applied it to women's health, we wouldn't have to pick specific priorities.

[00:18:39] And just to be clear, when you said you don't like the five-year grant timeline, what are you suggesting, shorter, longer?

[00:18:47] I just want to make sure that people understand the implication of what you're saying.

[00:18:50] I want to be clear, and it's very privileged of me as a tenured professor, 25 years of my career, saying about NIH grants, right?

[00:18:57] The current academic system, the way it's set up, is that you need all these NIH grants to keep getting promoted in advance.

[00:19:02] But five years, with a very limited NIH budget of a max of $500,000 per year to advance science does not allow for high risk and discovery.

[00:19:12] First of all, it's not enough money, but also it doesn't allow to shift.

[00:19:15] So in two years, if you have nothing that exciting, you still get funding, assuming you're getting some data for five years.

[00:19:21] So to me, and this is probably a much longer conversation, the whole way we fund science should be shifted.

[00:19:28] It doesn't mean there should be no five-year grants, but there should be shift, right?

[00:19:32] What Michelle does with bioengineering.

[00:19:34] Some of that doesn't need a five-year.

[00:19:36] Some needs a 10-year, but some needs a two-year.

[00:19:38] And the fact that we are limited to this is limiting our ability to really create discovery.

[00:19:44] Thank you so much.

[00:19:45] Michelle, you and many other folks in the space have spoken about the problem of funding for women's health.

[00:19:51] We feel like we're having some momentum and having an impact.

[00:19:56] From your perspective, what should we be funding if funds truly become readily available,

[00:20:02] if the $12 billion becomes actual instead of theoretical?

[00:20:07] Well, I think the key to understanding all of human disease actually goes back to pregnancy.

[00:20:14] So you can say actually 100% of people are affected by women's health because 100% of people were in utero with their own placenta inside the mother.

[00:20:25] And we know things like preeclampsia during pregnancy can result in cardiovascular disease in the baby 40 or 50 years later.

[00:20:34] So we need to understand the imprinting that we're doing during pregnancy that's going to affect that child, male or female, throughout their entire life course.

[00:20:44] And so thinking about health and disease, not just as of each single person, but as an intergenerational process, that is critical to understanding this.

[00:20:55] And I think if you look at what we know about pregnancy, it is shockingly little.

[00:21:01] It's very much about managing the process, not about understanding how it works, why it works, how we could potentially intervene,

[00:21:08] and how we can deal with the fact that if somebody does have, you know, their mother had preeclampsia while they were pregnant with them,

[00:21:16] what can they do to reduce their later risks of cardiovascular disease?

[00:21:22] And I think even what you just described, we've heard over and over again, especially with the Black Women's Health Initiative,

[00:21:29] that we have the highest maternal mortality of any developed country, which continues to shock people when we hear it.

[00:21:37] But connecting that, something in utero could be a signal to future health.

[00:21:42] That's what everybody's looking for is early diagnosis is better treatment and better health outcomes.

[00:21:48] So I think that's a really terrific example that I don't think many people know.

[00:21:54] I'd be curious if we did a little poll.

[00:21:56] What are the implications of preeclampsia 40 or 50 years down the pike?

[00:22:01] Katie, where do you see some of the biggest gaps in knowledge?

[00:22:04] And I know you're focused a lot on the education and the research as well.

[00:22:09] I always start from a point of view.

[00:22:11] If we don't have the vocabulary and we don't understand what the words mean or what the conditions are,

[00:22:17] it makes it very difficult to have an informed conversation and to make change.

[00:22:22] Yeah, I mean, I think you're totally right.

[00:22:24] And I also so appreciate the conversation surrounding pregnancy because I feel like we are only focused,

[00:22:30] and I think it's a good example, right, of a specific time in a person's life and a specific,

[00:22:36] I would say condition, but it's not a disease, nor is being a woman, nor is menopause.

[00:22:40] But, you know, a specific time that we're looking at, and I think that's one of the issues surrounding women's health

[00:22:44] is we're not thinking about it from a big picture perspective.

[00:22:47] We're thinking about it from a body part, a specific disease, or a specific age, right?

[00:22:54] And so we really need to be thinking about it from a much broader perspective, a much higher priority perspective,

[00:23:01] and from a longevity perspective.

[00:23:03] So I think for us, and really, I hate to pick a, you know, a favorite child.

[00:23:08] It's impossible to do, which is why I tell my own children, my dog is my favorite child.

[00:23:13] But in this case, I think that, you know, looking at conditions and thinking about how we're defining women's health,

[00:23:20] anything that differently, disproportionately, or specifically impacts women, which by the way, that's everything.

[00:23:26] So we need to think of all health as women's health and really elevate that conversation.

[00:23:31] I know we have, and we've heard about it already, these challenges and gaps in knowledge surrounding menopause,

[00:23:41] definitely surrounding pregnancy.

[00:23:43] I'd throw in, and I see some chatter as well about things like endometriosis and uterine fibroids,

[00:23:49] which impact far more women than I think people know and understand.

[00:23:54] But the amount of federal dollars going into research those conditions are minuscule compared to other areas.

[00:24:03] Things like autoimmune conditions, 80% of autoimmune patients are women.

[00:24:07] Why?

[00:24:07] We, you know, luckily now we have a new office related to autoimmune disease research within the NIH that sits under the Office of Women's Health Research.

[00:24:15] But again, it's got $10 million right now.

[00:24:18] So how are we going to increase that?

[00:24:20] Menopause, we've talked a lot about, but even cardiovascular disease.

[00:24:23] Heart disease is still the number one killer of women.

[00:24:25] And we've been saying this for decades now.

[00:24:27] So why?

[00:24:28] What's happening?

[00:24:29] How can we get to this?

[00:24:30] And there is something to this idea that clues during pregnancy may impact you later on in life.

[00:24:35] We're also thinking about that maternal mortality piece.

[00:24:38] Bone health.

[00:24:40] Alzheimer's disease disproportionately impacts women.

[00:24:43] And so I think this is really a whole life course perspective that we need to be thinking about.

[00:24:48] And we just need to plus everything up and really integrate it across the biomedical research ecosystem to really truly make progress.

[00:24:57] And to your point, Rachel, about sort of literacy and knowing the language, I think there's a huge component both in terms of the research and clinical workforce.

[00:25:05] A, doctors and nurses may not be learning as much about women's health as we thought they might.

[00:25:11] That's one piece.

[00:25:12] And then also health literacy amongst the public.

[00:25:15] So not just little girls, not just moms, everyone.

[00:25:19] We all need to be able to talk about this and think about it.

[00:25:22] And, you know, I think the president was really proud.

[00:25:24] He said he thought he was the first president to use the word menopause in an executive order.

[00:25:28] So I think that's probably true.

[00:25:31] But I think that's something that we can all really think about.

[00:25:34] How are we really talking about women's health as something that's completely normal, not stigmatized, and then fully turning that into how are we really living well and what do our treatment options look like?

[00:25:46] Yeah.

[00:25:47] My life objective at this point is to have the word stigma never appear in a sentence with women's health.

[00:25:53] Again, I hope some of us live that long to see that day.

[00:25:57] We are so short on time.

[00:25:59] There are a lot of amazing questions.

[00:26:01] We're going to do our best in follow-up to answer them.

[00:26:04] I want to thank my panelists for giving us all the opportunity to learn from you.

[00:26:09] There were a lot of big themes about connecting what happens earlier in life to what happens later, about understanding the underlying conditions, about research, about how long these concerns can last.

[00:26:24] And I want to thank all of you and encourage you all to look up these amazing folks.

[00:26:29] They come at this work from different perspectives, but they each have a lot more to share with us that hopefully will give you important information when you head into the booth in November.

[00:26:40] So as we wrap up this episode of Beyond the Paper Gown, I'm struck by the depth and breadth of our discussion today.

[00:26:53] We've truly gone beyond the ballot to explore the intricate connections between research, innovation, policy, and women's health.

[00:27:00] So let's recap some of the key insights our expert panel shared.

[00:27:05] First, we heard a clear call for a fundamental shift in how we approach women's health research.

[00:27:11] It's not just about specific conditions.

[00:27:13] It's also about understanding women's biology across the entire lifespan.

[00:27:19] This requires more funding, innovative research methods, and potentially restructuring how grants are distributed.

[00:27:27] Designating an Institute of Women's Health at the NIH could be a game changer, elevating the priority of women's health research, ensure more dedicated funding, and encouraging interdisciplinary approaches.

[00:27:39] Our experts emphasize the need to broaden our definition of women's health.

[00:27:43] We're talking about conditions like autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, and heart disease.

[00:27:49] Issues that manifest differently or disproportionately in women, but aren't always categorized as women's health.

[00:27:57] Our panel also highlighted the critical role of health literacy, both for medical professionals and the public.

[00:28:03] After all, we can only advocate effectively for what we understand.

[00:28:09] The connection to policy?

[00:28:10] Well, policy dictated that women had to be included in clinical trials and that sex has to be considered a variable in research funded by the NIH.

[00:28:19] The recent White House initiative on women's health research is a significant example of how policy affects research, which then affects the diagnostics and treatments to address women's health concerns.

[00:28:31] While the president was able to earmark some funds dedicated to women's health, it will literally take an act of Congress to pass a proposed $12 billion program to address women's health and funding for women's health research.

[00:28:45] You know, as we've seen throughout this discussion, advancing women's health isn't just about addressing specific medical conditions.

[00:28:53] It's about reimagining our entire approach to health research, policy, and even education.

[00:28:58] By connecting the dots between early life experiences, ongoing health, and later life outcomes, we can create more comprehensive and effective health policies for women.

[00:29:10] And this is where we all come in.

[00:29:13] Given that much of this will require an act of Congress, we need to have representatives who are willing to support women's health.

[00:29:20] Voting matters.

[00:29:51] Thanks for listening and take good care.

[00:30:04] This episode was produced by Patrick Shambayati and me, and our associate producer is Kyla McMillian.