Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by First Lady Jill Biden at the 2024 HLTH Conference

Las Vegas, Nevada

Good morning.

It was an ordinary Saturday in an extraordinary life.

I was in my office in the East Wing doing what community college teachers do on weekends—especially on a weekend so late in the semester: I was grading papers.

It was late April last year. Earlier that morning, I’d read in The New York Times that the U.S. loses $1.8 billion in working time every year to the menopause symptoms that upend women’s lives.

It struck me—I’d experienced those kinds of symptoms too, so had many of my friends, but, I thought, that’s the way life is, isn’t it?

And then, that afternoon, Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California, came in for a meeting. She wanted to talk about women’s health research.

It’s a problem that’s so simple—yet often ignored: women’s health is understudied and research is underfunded. As a result, too many of our medications, treatments, health products, and medical school textbooks are based on men.

That’s why, if you ask any woman in America about her health care, she probably has a story to tell.

You know her.

She’s the woman who gets debilitating migraines, but can’t find treatment options that work for her. She’s the woman whose heart attack isn’t detected because her symptoms don’t look like a man’s, even as heart disease is the leading cause of death among women. She’s the woman going through menopause, who visits her doctor and leaves with more questions than answers, even though half the country will go through menopause at some point in their lives.

It seems like women’s bodies are considered miracles when we’re in our child-bearing years, and mysteries as we age.

I knew this had to change.

My husband, President Joe Biden, has a deep understanding of how government works and how to get things done quickly. So when I told Joe about this research gap, he got to work.

Last November, we launched the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research.

From an ordinary Saturday conversation, the Biden Administration has done something extraordinary and fast. All in less than a year, we used the convening power of the White House to bring together government agencies, researchers, medical experts, innovators, and investors. 

Joe signed the most comprehensive Executive Order ever, to expand and improve research and innovation in women’s health.

The NIH is investing millions of dollars in new, interdisciplinary women’s health research, like how menopause affects our hearts, brains, and bones.

The Department of Defense is committing half a billion dollars each year to women’s health research. And what helps women service members helps all women.

And just today, ARPA-H, the agency that Joe created to invest in the most cutting-edge health breakthroughs, announced $110 million for women’s health researchers and startups to bring new treatments and cures to market. 

This is government at its best.

ARPA-H received an unprecedented 1,700 submissions for this funding sprint, which shows the energy and exploration that’s possible in this field. From there, ARPA-H chose to fund 23 recipients with the best “sparks”—meaning the most promising ideas so that researchers can take their work to the next level, and the best “launchpads”—those are the teams that are ready to bring new treatments and health products to market within the next two years.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

One in 10 women suffers from a painful, debilitating condition called endometriosis. It can take as long as a decade for women to get a diagnosis. One of today’s recipients from Washington University is developing a blood test—the first of its kind—to reduce the time it takes to diagnose the disease from years to days. So, women can get the treatments they need more quickly.

We also know that women are more likely to get migraines, but we don’t know why. At UNC-Chapel Hill, a study is being funded to see how migraines are connected to the lymphatic system to help solve that mystery. And the team is working toward personalized treatments for migraines.

ARPA-H is de-risking investments in these big ideas, so that answers can get to the women who need them now.

The potential in this space is too great to ignore. In 2021, the Boston Consulting Group estimated that the size of the women’s health market would grow from $9 billion to $29 billion in just eight years, because of the growing momentum from funders and founders to address the unmet health needs of women. I know you see these opportunities in your day-to-day work.

Here’s what I also want you to know. The women of America are waiting on you.

Any time I get together with my sisters and friends, we have conversations about our health. We ask each other: should I be taking hormone therapy for symptoms related to menopause? How is it possible that my heart attack was almost missed? 

It’s time for investors, researchers, and business leaders to have those conversations too, not as an afterthought but as a first thought. Those kinds of questions belong in your research proposals, in your laboratories, in your pitch decks.

There is incredible momentum behind women’s health right now.

What are you going to do to make sure this energy is unstoppable?

So that we leave doctors’ offices with more answers than questions. And take this moment of opportunity to create something extraordinary.

You can count me in. And I hope women can count on you.

To continue this discussion, it’s my pleasure to introduce Dr. Carolyn Mazure, the chair of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, who leads ARPA-H. Maria Shriver, a tireless advocate for advancing women’s health. And Lucy Pérez, a senior partner with McKinsey & Company.

Please help me welcome them to the stage.

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