LAS VEGAS—First lady of the U.S. Jill Biden, Ph.D., announced $110 million in funding for women’s health research and product development through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).
Many of the selected projects focus on advancing the science of menopause and menopause treatment. The funding announcement builds on her now billion-dollar campaign to advance women’s health through the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research launched in November 2023.
Following a flurry of strobing lights, the first lady walked on stage and addressed a crowd of hundreds in Las Vegas. Biden announced that 23 awardees will receive ARPA-H’s Sprint for Women’s Health funding. The recipients will tackle projects like creating a noninvasive blood test for endometriosis, assessing brain disorders with a noninvasive MRI imaging biomarker and a new way to assess women’s experience of pain by tracking eye movement.
“Women's health is under study and research is underfunded,” Biden said. “As a result, too many of our medications, treatments, health products and medical school textbooks are based on men.”
The first lady said 1,700 groups applied for the funding from 34 countries and 45 states. A quarter of the 23 projects funded will bring women’s health solutions to market within two years.
Some of the award recipients include Aspira Women’s Health Inc. of Shelton, Connecticut, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Inc. of Boston and the Children's Research Institute of Washington, D.C.
Biden called on conference attendees to prioritize women’s health and build on its recent momentum.
“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 deck,” Biden said.
As part of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health, the first lady secured an annual contribution of $500 million in funding from the Department of Defense and $200 million from the National Institutes of Health.
“You can count on me, and I hope that women can count on you,” Biden said in closing.