Photo: Alison Kuznitz/SHNS
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (State House News Service) — First Lady Jill Biden announced a $100 million commitment to bolstering "life-changing" women's health research and development during a visit to Cambridge on Wednesday.
The funding will support the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Sprint for Women's Health, Biden said, as elected officials urged the private sector to join in the federal government's ambitious research endeavor.
The investment is part of the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research, which Biden is helping to lead. The effort aims to close long-standing research gaps in women's health and accelerate innovation. Biden lamented that women's health has been chronically underfunded, leaving researchers with scant insight into the diseases and conditions that disproportionately affect women.
"So we're going to invest in your discoveries early, when private companies may not be willing to take the risk," Biden said. "We are going to give women's health research and startups the funding they need to grow and to help them bring ideas to market and to women who need them the most."
The first lady invoked examples of a woman whose heart attack isn't recognized because the symptoms are different from a man's experience, and of a female patient leaving a doctor's office with more questions than answers about menopause.
Biden spoke at The Engine, a venture capital firm that invests in "tough tech," which the company describes as "transformative technology that solves the world's most important challenges through the convergence of breakthrough science, engineering, and leadership." The Engine Accelerator also provides lab space, specialized equipment and other infrastructure for startups.
Massachusetts in September was selected to host a biomedical and health hub in Greater Boston through ARPA-H, part of the Biden's administration's mission to spur innovation in health care and the life sciences.
The new funding injection for women's health will be spread across multiple projects, with the goal of galvanizing early-stage discoveries and accelerating efforts to launch innovations, ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn said. Funding will be awarded after a series of proposals and pitches, said Wegrzyn, who signaled the government's commitment should spark a "lot of downstream investment."
"We're here to catalyze this ecosystem that's represented here in this room," Wegrzyn told attendees, including entrepreneurs and investors. "We're announcing $100 million that we're going to commit to address these really tough challenges in women's health -- tackling brain health, tackling data gaps where women's data just doesn't exist yet, diseases that uniquely impact women and diseases that are chronic but disproportionately affect women."
Maria Shriver, a women's health advocate and a former first lady of California, said she spoke with Biden several months ago about the need to make a "transformative" impact on women's health.
"In the time since that meeting, this White House under her leadership has coordinated the biggest revolution in how women and girls will have their physical and mental health needs met," said Shriver, who called Wednesday's announcement a "historic moment."
"My hope is that it's not just the federal government that will make women's health the priority it needs to be," Shriver added. "I hope that every tech founder in this room and beyond this room, every philanthropist in this room, beyond this room, every innovator, every scientist, every researcher and every instigator in this room and in this country joins in this massive undertaking. Make no mistake: This is a massive undertaking, but women have never shied away from big, bold, massive undertakings."
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey noted that only one in three clinical trial participants are women. Markey said researchers don't know why the majority of people with autoimmune diseases are women, or why women are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.
"The first lady is now putting a rocket underneath women's health research. We need not a sick-care but a health care system for women in our country," said Markey, who stressed the importance of better coverage, prevention and research for women's health.
Other officials gathered at The Engine headquarters included U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao and Sen. Sal DiDomenico.
Biden arrived Tuesday night at Boston Logan International Airport, where she was greeted by Gov. Maura Healey and Mayor Michelle Wu.
Written by Alison Kuznitz/SHNS.
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