The Biden White House has announced the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, and Teresa K. Woodruff, PhD is praising the move. As a researcher who has long advocated for personalized medicine that starts with women’s health, she believes that this initiative will enable personal well-being, ensure generational health, and promote fundamental fairness.
Woodruff published work years ago that highlighted a significant issue in the field of medicine: sex as a biological variable was not included in the majority of published papers. This means that the entire pipeline of work from bench discovery through therapeutic intervention is skewed in a male direction. The Biden White House initiative aims to address this issue by promoting individual health in different aspects such as heart health, immune health, and the microbiome.
By focusing on women’s health, the initiative will also lead to better generational health for those born after this paradigm-shifting initiative. Maternal health is only ensured by a focus on women, and the White House initiative will also address the maternal mortality rate and provide better health services for women before, during, and after pregnancy.
Finally, Woodruff believes that the focus on women’s health will bring about fundamental fairness and address the lack of improvement in issues related to women’s health. She argues that when the health of women is prioritized, everyone benefits as a group and as individuals. With this new initiative, personalized medicine can start with women’s unique needs and characteristics leading to more effective treatments for everyone.
