WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order creating a new women’s health division within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a White House task force, directing the federal government to strengthen research and improve how medical discoveries translate into care for women and girls throughout their lives.
Signed on October 19 alongside First Lady Melania Trump, the order calls for a more coordinated approach to women’s health, from childhood and pregnancy to menopause and ageing. It aims to address gaps in scientific understanding, speed up prevention and diagnosis, improve treatment, and ensure that research findings reach healthcare providers and patients.
The White House said the new division must be established within an appropriate NIH institute or centre within 90 days. It will work alongside the NIH’s existing Office of Research on Women’s Health rather than replace it.
The initiative places renewed federal attention on conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, chronic pain, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, infertility, menopause, Alzheimer’s disease and osteoporosis.
For women’s healthcare, the central test will be whether the new structure leads to better evidence, earlier diagnosis and more effective treatment—not simply another layer of administration.
Susie Wiles and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead task force
Trump announced that the White House Women’s Health Task Force would be led by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Wiles recently completed treatment for breast cancer and announced in September that she was cancer-free. Trump said the task force would hold its first meeting on October 19, coinciding with Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
During the White House event, Trump said the executive order would direct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish the new NIH division, describing the move as long overdue. He credited Melania Trump with drawing attention to the absence of a dedicated division of this kind.
The first lady, who championed the initiative, said the effort should make medical advances accessible and affordable to women regardless of their financial circumstances. She also called for greater openness, education and compassion around women’s health.
The administration’s stated ambition is to move beyond identifying research gaps and accelerate the adoption of evidence-based interventions in clinical and community settings.
What the new NIH division will focus on
Under the executive order, the division is expected to strengthen coordination of women’s health research, address areas where scientific evidence remains insufficient and accelerate the translation of discoveries into prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
It will also focus on increasing the inclusion of women and girls in clinical trials and holding recipients of federal research grants accountable for considering sex as a biological variable.
That requirement matters because biological differences can influence disease risk, symptoms, drug responses and treatment outcomes. Research that does not adequately account for these differences may leave clinicians with incomplete evidence when treating women.
The order identifies a broad range of conditions for greater attention, including heart disease and stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune and inflammatory conditions, osteoporosis, mental health disorders, chronic pain, neurological conditions, maternal health, endometriosis, fibroids, infertility and menopause.
The HHS statement also lists polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome among the conditions to be studied. The executive order frames these priorities across the life course, recognising that women’s healthcare needs change from infancy and adolescence through reproductive years, midlife and older age.
The initiative is intended to encourage scientific innovation, strengthen collaboration and help ensure that research produces practical benefits for patients.
A new division, but women’s health research at NIH dates back decades
The new division will not mark the beginning of women’s health research at the NIH. The agency has maintained an Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) since 1990.
According to the NIH, the office was established amid concerns that women were inconsistently included in biomedical research and clinical studies, leaving important gaps in knowledge about diseases and treatments affecting them. Congress subsequently affirmed its role through the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993.
The office works across the NIH to advance research on women’s health, support appropriate representation of women in biomedical studies and promote the consideration of sex as a biological variable in federally supported research.
The new division is intended to work in coordination with this established office, with the administration emphasising a stronger focus on turning scientific findings into clinical care and improved health outcomes.
The executive order does not specify a new funding amount for the division. It also states that implementation is subject to applicable law and the availability of appropriations, making future resources an important factor in determining the initiative’s reach.
Trump order reverses Biden-era women’s health initiative
The new order also changes the federal policy framework established under former President Joe Biden.
It revokes Biden’s March 2024 executive order on advancing women’s health research and innovation, as well as a November 2023 presidential memorandum that established a White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. The earlier initiative was championed by then-first lady Jill Biden.
The Trump administration presents the new structure as a way to elevate federal leadership and improve the translation of research into practical health solutions. However, the change comes amid broader disputes over the administration’s approach to biomedical research and healthcare policy.
During Trump’s second term, his administration has pursued reductions in federal healthcare spending and sought changes to NIH research funding. Federal courts have also challenged certain cuts to NIH grants, including funding decisions involving diversity-related research.
Reuters has reported that the administration has sought greater political control over health research funding. Such developments have raised questions about how the government will balance its stated commitment to women’s health research with its wider decisions on research funding and scientific priorities.
The executive order’s effectiveness will therefore depend not only on its formal structure, but also on the resources, research priorities and accountability measures that follow.
Wider healthcare policies add to scrutiny
The women’s health announcement arrives as other Trump administration policies affecting reproductive and hormonal healthcare remain under scrutiny.
The administration has launched a safety review of mifepristone, a medication used in abortion care. Major medical groups have criticised the review as politically motivated, while anti-abortion organisations have argued that it is proceeding too slowly. US officials told a court earlier in October that the review would be completed by March.
Federal health officials have also moved to remove a longstanding safety warning from many hormone replacement therapy products. The policy shift has coincided with increased demand for some menopause treatments and reports of tighter supplies of certain products, including progesterone and estrogen patches.
Regulators have also examined the growing use of testosterone therapy among menopausal women, while HHS has introduced new conditions for some family-planning grant applicants. Those conditions have prompted legal challenges from several US states.
These separate policy decisions do not determine the outcome of the new women’s health initiative, but they form part of the wider context in which its priorities and implementation will be assessed.
Research must translate into better care
The executive order sets out a broad ambition: improve the evidence available to clinicians, identify conditions that have not received sufficient research attention and move effective discoveries into routine healthcare.
For patients, the potential benefits would depend on whether these priorities lead to more representative clinical trials, stronger evidence on sex-related differences, earlier recognition of symptoms and treatments supported by reliable research.
The creation of a dedicated NIH division gives the administration a new organisational mechanism to pursue those goals. It does not, by itself, establish that research gaps will be closed or that access to treatment will improve.
The next steps will include establishing the division within the 90-day deadline, defining its role alongside the existing Office of Research on Women’s Health, and determining how federal research priorities and available funding will support its work.
For women and girls, the significance of the initiative will ultimately be measured by the quality, affordability and availability of the healthcare it helps deliver.
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