Yesterday marked the end of Aspen Ideas: Health, and one big focus of this year’s festival was women’s health. Long neglected by the medical establishment, a growing awareness around women’s health is leading to more discussion, research, and innovations around addressing women’s unique health needs.
It’s been a long road, said Katie Schubert, the president and CEO of the Society for Women's Health Research.
Before 1990, the term “women’s health” was limited primarily to reproductive health. And until the early 1990s, medical researchers rarely included women in their clinical research. Male mice were almost exclusively used in laboratory experiments, leading many physicians to treat women based on studies designed for men.
“Most of what we know is based on knowledge in male patients,” said Schubert. More specifically: white men of a certain age (in their 30s) and of a certain size (around 150 pounds).
Thanks to advocacy from the Society for Women’s Health Research, in 1993, a law passed mandating that clinical research funded by the National Institutes of Health include women. However, the society had to continue advocating for researchers to consider sex differences in their studies – an NIH policy that didn't go into effect until 2016.
Despite that progress, women’s health research remains underfunded, resulting in lingering disparities – and misperceptions around women’s health.
For instance, a common myth that women have a higher pain tolerance than men because they endure menstrual cramps and childbirth continues to spread.
“All of that is rubbish,” said Paula Greaves, a practicing OB-GYN at Wellstar Health System in Georgia. She spoke as part of an Aspen Ideas: Health panel on Tuesday, discussing new innovations in women’s health.
Existing research focuses primarily on fertility, overlooking a much broader spectrum of health conditions that disproportionately affect women.
That includes lung cancer rates among non-smoker, which are twice as high for women than for men. Schubert noted that women are also more likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s and autoimmune diseases. And while cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women, she pointed out that most of the clinical guidelines are geared towards men, ignoring the fact that women often experience atypical symptoms, such as indigestion and back pain — sometimes without the obvious chest discomfort.
“We have seen so many women who have been turned away or ignored for symptoms of cardiovascular events, and for many of them, it's too late,” said Schubert.
Disparities are even greater for women of color; the maternal mortality rate for Black women is nearly three times as high as for white women — regardless of socioeconomic status.
“Why is that? We need more research,” Schubert said.
Making Progress
In 2023, the Biden Administration launched the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research and oversaw over $1 billion of new federal funding for women's health research. Private industry has echoed those moves, investing a record $2.6 billion last year in women’s health.
New technology has also propelled awareness around women’s health into the mainstream, from social media influencers talking about menopause to a new AI tool that helps women assess their risk of breast cancer and create personalized prevention plans.
Kaitlin Christine, the founder and CEO of Gabbi, spoke at Aspen Ideas: Health about why she focused on expanding access to diagnostic tools after losing her mother to breast cancer.
“The hardest thing for me to grapple with was there were things that could have been done,” she said.
Christine’s mother died of late-stage breast cancer in 2013, despite getting annual mammograms. She had a high risk of developing cancer due to her extremely dense breast tissue, which also prevented regular mammograms from detecting her cancer.
A year and a half after her mom’s death, Christine found lumps in her breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer at 24 years old.
The experience inspired her to launch a Gabbi, which offers women an individual risk assessment for breast cancer, allowing them to better understand what types of screenings are necessary based on their risk level. One example: whether regular mammograms are sufficient, or whether a woman needs a breast MRI because of dense breast tissue.
The growing acknowledgement that women’s health deserves more attention has also reached — at least in part — the Trump Administration.
After announcing in April that the government would stop funding the Women’s Health Initiative — a long-term study on strategies to prevent heart disease, cancers, and fractures in postmenopausal women — public outcry compelled the government to restore funding 24 hours later.
That kind of government support is critical, said Schubert, given that historically, women’s health research hasn’t received the same level of private investment.
“The burden shouldn't be on us as patients to advocate for what we need.”
