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For generations, women have been told that their symptoms are stress, that their pain is normal, that the research simply isn’t there. On October 19, 2026, the federal government took its most significant step yet toward changing that — not with a speech, but with an executive order that creates an entirely new division at the National Institutes of Health dedicated to women’s health.
The order, signed by President Donald Trump with First Lady Melania Trump at his side, directs the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a Women’s Health Division within the NIH within 90 days. It also creates the first-ever White House Women’s Health Task Force, co-chaired by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, to coordinate federal efforts across every stage of life — from infancy and adolescence through pregnancy, midlife, menopause, and aging.
The message is unambiguous: the gaps in women’s health research are no longer acceptable. And the conditions singled out for attention are among the most understudied, misunderstood, and dismissed in all of medicine.
Here are five of the health issues scientists are now being directed to understand better — and why each one matters.
1. Cardiovascular Disease: The Number One Killer Women Still Don’t See Coming
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States. Yet for decades, it has been framed as a men’s problem — and the research has reflected that bias.
Women have historically been underrepresented in cardiovascular research, and the consequences are measurable: delayed diagnosis, atypical symptom recognition, and worse outcomes compared to men. Female hypertension, in particular, is “underestimated, underdiagnosed, and understudied”. Conditions that affect women disproportionately — including preeclampsia and peripartum cardiomyopathy — remain poorly understood, with an urgent need for research into sex-specific mechanisms and targeted treatments.
The new division is directed to increase scientific review of understudied conditions, promote research into sex-specific outcomes, and strengthen the requirement that federally funded research account for sex as a biological variable. For cardiovascular disease, that means finally asking the questions that have been skipped: How do heart attacks present differently in women? Why do women with acute coronary syndromes face delayed diagnosis? What role do hormonal transitions play in cardiovascular risk?
2. Autoimmune and Inflammatory Conditions: The 80% Gap
More than 80% of people diagnosed with autoimmune diseases are women. Lupus affects up to nine women for every one man. And yet, doctors and scientists still don’t fully understand why.
“One of the biggest gaps in our knowledge is understanding how sex chromosomes and sex hormones influence the immune system across different tissues and organs,” researchers at Cedars-Sinai noted in 2026. Most research to date has focused on single-disease cohorts, leaving sex differences across autoimmune conditions inadequately explored. The result is a diagnostic odyssey for millions of women: nearly one in three women with autoimmune diseases waits at least four years for a diagnosis.
The new NIH division is explicitly tasked with advancing research into autoimmune and inflammatory conditions. The hope is that a dedicated focus will finally unravel the mechanisms — genetic, hormonal, and immunological — that make women so disproportionately vulnerable, and translate that understanding into earlier diagnosis and better treatment.
3. Endometriosis: 190 Million Women, Decades of Neglect
Endometriosis affects an estimated 190 million women worldwide. It is a chronic inflammatory condition that causes severe pelvic pain, infertility, and a profound reduction in quality of life. And it remains underdiagnosed, under-researched, and underfunded.
Despite decades of research, the pathogenesis of endometriosis — how and why endometrial-like tissue grows outside the uterus — remains incompletely elucidated. Diagnosis is often delayed for years, and treatment options are limited and often ineffective. The vaginal microbiome’s role is still unclear, and a comprehensive map of co-occurring conditions remains underexplored.
The executive order names endometriosis explicitly as a priority condition. For the millions of women who have been told their pain is normal, the message is different: it is not normal, it is not in your head, and it is now a federal research priority.
4. Menopause: The Transition That Was Never Studied
Menopause is not a niche concern. Every woman who lives long enough will experience it. Yet menopause has been “missing from most electronic health records” — a 2026 study found that it was documented in the records of only about 7% of women in a national dataset, and just 14% of women who reported menopause in a survey.
The evidence gaps are most acute for perimenopause, often the most disruptive part of the transition. The long-term effects of starting menopausal hormone therapy during perimenopause remain understudied. And for women with rare diseases, scientific knowledge about how menopause interacts with their condition remains scarce.
The new division is directed to advance research into menopause as part of a lifespan approach to women’s health. The task force is charged with ensuring “timely and stage-specific prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care” from midlife through aging. The goal is not just to treat symptoms, but to understand a biological transition that has been ignored for far too long.
5. Maternal Health: A Preventable Crisis
The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income country. The causes are complex — cardiovascular complications, hemorrhage, infection, mental health conditions — but the common thread is that many of these deaths are preventable.
Federal investment in maternal health research has been growing. The IMPROVE Initiative at the NIH supports research to reduce preventable causes of maternal mortality and improve outcomes, with a $10 million increase** in funding for fiscal year 2026. The **NIH IMPROVE Act**, passed by the House with unanimous support in July 2026, would authorize **$63.4 million to carry out the initiative through 2031.
But the gaps remain significant, particularly for Black women, who are disproportionately affected by maternal mortality and morbidity. Machine learning models are being developed to integrate clinical and social data to identify high-risk pregnancies earlier. The new Women’s Health Division is directed to strengthen research into maternal health as part of its lifespan approach. The task force is expected to coordinate efforts across federal agencies to turn research into care — and to close the disparities that have persisted for generations.
The creation of a Women’s
Health Division at the NIH is not a cure. It is a beginning. The executive order does not specify how much funding will be directed toward these priorities, and it will take years — perhaps decades — for research to translate into better care.
But the symbolic and structural significance is real. For the first time, women’s health has a dedicated home within the federal agency that funds medical research. For the first time, conditions that affect women disproportionately or uniquely are being named as priorities, not afterthoughts. And for the first time, the federal government is saying out loud what millions of women have known all along: the research gap is not an accident. It is a failure. And it is time to fix it.
The five issues on this list — cardiovascular disease, autoimmune conditions, endometriosis, menopause, and maternal health — are not the only ones that matter. But they are among the most urgent, the most understudied, and the most consequential for women’s lives. The push has begun. The question now is whether it will be sustained.
