DeLauro Celebrates Women’s Health Research Initiative

Today, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) released a statement praising the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. Announced by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, the initiative seeks to fundamentally change how the United States approaches research on women’s health with the goal of improving health outcomes and the lives of women across the country.

Dr. Carolyn Mazure, a constituent of Congresswoman DeLauro and a doctor at Yale-New Haven, will chair the initiative. In 1998, Dr. Mazure created Women’s Health Research at Yale, an interdisciplinary research center that has been a national leader for research, sharing health information, and more on women’s health and the interplay of gender, health, and sex.

“When I first came to Congress, we had to fight to get women included in the health research trials at the National Institutes of Health,” said Congresswoman DeLauro. “A novel concept at the time, the inclusion of women in these health trials led to breakthroughs in disease research and improved health outcomes for millions of American women. Dr. Carolyn Mazure has been a trusted ally and friend in this fight. She came to me when I took the pen of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations subcommittee, and said the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) needed a line item to significantly increase resources for this Office. So that is what I did, and we have grown the Office’s funding to more than $64 million and empowered ORWH with grant-making authority in my time as Chair of the subcommittee. That is why I am so proud that the Biden administration is leading the charge to improve health outcomes for a new generation of American women. I applaud them for taking this step forward and will work closely with the administration to support this new initiative.”

The Initiative charges federal agencies with a number of directives, including:

• Delivering concrete recommendations on actions the Federal government can take to advance women’s health research
• Setting priority areas of focus where additional investments could be transformative, such as Alzheimer’s, perimenopause and menopause, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease, and endometriosis and fibroids.
• Engaging the scientific, private sector, and philanthropic communities to explore new public-private partnerships and help maximize investments in women’s health research.