Biden signs executive order on advancing study of women's health while chiding 'backward' GOP ideas – The Associated Press
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Biden indicators government order that advances examine of girls’s well being
President Joe Biden speaks throughout a St. Patrick’s Day reception within the East Room of the White Home, Sunday, March 17, 2024. (AP Picture/Stephanie Scarbrough)
President Joe Biden speaks throughout a St. Patrick’s Day reception within the East Room of the White Home, Sunday, March 17, 2024. (AP Picture/Stephanie Scarbrough)
First Woman Jill Biden waves to attendees throughout an occasion with navy households at Fort Buchanan in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sunday, March. 17, 2024. (AP Picture/Alejandro Granadillo)
First Woman Jill Biden waves to attendees throughout an occasion with navy households at Fort Buchanan in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sunday, March. 17, 2024. (AP Picture/Alejandro Granadillo)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an government order Monday aimed toward advancing the examine of girls’s well being by strengthening knowledge assortment and offering higher funding alternatives for biomedical analysis whereas chiding Republicans for having “no clue concerning the energy of girls” however saying they’re “about to search out out” come November’s election.
Girls’s well being has lengthy been underfunded and understudied. It wasn’t till the Nineteen Nineties that the federal authorities mandated girls be included in federally funded medical analysis; for many of medical historical past, although, scientific examine was based mostly nearly fully on males.
“We nonetheless know too little about how you can successfully stop, diagnose and deal with a big selection of well being circumstances in girls,” mentioned Dr. Carolyn Mazure, the top of the White Home initiative on girls’s well being.
At this time, analysis typically fails to correctly monitor variations between ladies and men, and doesn’t symbolize girls equally significantly for diseases extra widespread to them — which Biden prompt his order would assist change.
“To state the apparent, girls are half the inhabitants and underrepresented throughout the board. However not in my administration,” the president mentioned, drawing raucous applause at a White Home reception marking Girls’s Historical past Month.
Biden mentioned he’s lengthy been a believer within the “energy of analysis” to assist save lives and get high-quality well being care to the individuals who want it. However the government order additionally checks off a political field throughout an election 12 months when girls will probably be essential to his reelection efforts. First girl Jill Biden is main each the hassle to arrange and mobilize feminine voters and the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research.
The announcement comes because the ripple results unfold from the Supreme Courtroom’s choice that overturned federal abortion rights, referring to medical points for ladies who by no means supposed to finish their pregnancies. In Alabama, for example, the future of IVF was thrown into question statewide after a decide’s ruling.
In his feedback on the reception, Biden didn’t point out by identify former President Donald Trump, who’s now operating to reclaim the White Home. As an alternative, he referred to “my predecessor” who had been “bragging about overturning” the Roe v. Wade choice that had assured the constitutional proper to abortion.
The president prompt that may damage Trump and the GOP throughout this fall’s election, saying, “You’ll be able to’t lead America with previous concepts and take us backward.”
Additional leaning into politics, Biden mentioned his administration has “turned across the economic system as a result of we centered on girls,” noting that feminine unemployment had fallen and the variety of women-owned small companies had elevated.
He mentioned his administration has ensured that “girls can entry jobs in sectors the place they’ve been traditionally underrepresented” and mentioned he’d informed leaders from a number of the nation’s prime labor unions that he desires to see extra girls and minorities of their ranks.
Girls have been a important a part of the coalition that elected Biden in 2020, giving him 55% of their vote, based on AP VoteCast. Black girls and suburban girls have been pillars of Biden’s coalition whereas Trump had a modest benefit amongst white girls and a a lot wider share of white girls with out faculty levels, based on the AP survey of greater than 110,000 voters in that 12 months’s election.
Vice President Kamala Harris, girls’s well being advocate Maria Shriver and the primary girl additionally addressed the reception.
“Lastly girls will get the well being care we deserve,” Jill Biden mentioned, saying the order signed Monday was “with out precedent.”
Harris drew sturdy applause for noting that she “stood earlier than you as the primary girl vp of america” and talked about visiting an abortion clinic in Minnesota final week.
“There are those that are intent on dragging us backward,” the vp mentioned of Republican states which have restricted entry to abortion.
“All of us face a query: What sort of nation can we wish to stay in?” Harris mentioned. “A rustic of liberty, freedom and rule of legislation? Or a rustic of dysfunction, concern and hate?”
Shriver joked that that is in all probability the primary time a president has signed an government order that mentions menopause and mentioned the motion may solely be taken “by a president who respects girls.”
The Nationwide Institutes of Well being can also be launching a brand new effort round menopause and the therapy of menopausal signs that may determine analysis gaps and work to shut them, mentioned White Home adviser Jennifer Klein. NIH funds an enormous quantity of biomedical analysis, crucial for the understanding of how drugs have an effect on the human physique and for deciding ultimately how you can dose drugs.
Some circumstances have totally different signs for ladies and men, comparable to coronary heart illness. Others are extra widespread in girls, like Alzheimer’s illness, and a few are distinctive to girls — comparable to endometriosis, uterine cancers and fibroids discovered within the uterus. It’s all ripe for examine, Mazure mentioned.
And uneven analysis can have profound results; a 2020 examine by researchers on the College of Chicago and College of California, Berkeley, discovered that ladies have been being overmedicated and struggling unintended effects from widespread drugs, as a result of a lot of the dosage trials have been accomplished solely on males.
The first lady announced $100 million in funding final month for ladies’s well being.
___ Related Press author Gary Fields contributed to this report.
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