HHS Looks to AI, Innovation to Advance Women’s Healthcare

The Department of Health and Human Services is looking to accelerate the use of scientific research and innovation in women’s healthcare with a new $1 million initiative aimed at modernizing preventive care guidelines.   

Through its Women’s Initiative for Screening and Health (WISH) program, announced Friday, the Health Resources and Services Administration will award up to $1 million to establish a multidisciplinary coalition to review scientific evidence and modernize the Women’s Preventive Services Guidelines. The initiative also calls for developing and distributing guidance to underserved communities to help expand access to recommended preventive care.  

“The latest research only makes a difference when it reaches women and the clinicians caring for them,” HRSA Administrator Tom Engels said in a statement. “By bringing together clinical expertise and trusted community partners, we can help more women access recommended preventive care nationwide.” 

The effort supports a broader women’s health executive order, championed by First Lady Melania Trump, directing federal agencies to advance women’s health research and translate scientific and technological developments into improved diagnosis, prevention and treatment. Her office encouraged federal agencies to use “super intelligence to enhance our insight of female biology and speed up medical discoveries.” 

“We now possess extraordinary scientific capabilities, such as super intelligence, advanced biotechnology, and groundbreaking therapies. At the same time, social norms are changing, and topics that were once taboo are becoming open, well-informed, and necessary,” she said at an event announcing the order. “Together, these developments present a unique chance to reinvent women’s healthcare.” 

President Donald Trump signed the executive order last month directing HHS to establish a Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health within 90 days. The division will coordinate research into conditions that disproportionately affect women, expand women’s participation in clinical trials and promote the use of scientific findings in medical practice. 

“Many diseases and conditions that disproportionately or uniquely affect women have not received the level of research, clinical attention, and treatment that other diseases and conditions have received,” the order said. It indicated more research is needed in areas such as heart disease, mental health, infertility, polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome and others.

The order also establishes a White House Women’s Health Task Force, which will be co-chaired by Health Secretary Robert Kennedy and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. It will also include other prominent members of the president’s cabinet and administration including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, among others.  

The executive order does not include dedicated federal funding for the task force or new NIH division. It also does not include a Congressional funding request or funding commitments from federal health agencies. It does, however, indicate that HHS will pay for the administrative costs of the task force.  

The order also revokes two previous Biden-era executive actions focused on women’s health research: Executive Order 14120 “Advancing Women’s Health Research and Innovation,” and the presidential memorandum of November 13, 2023, “White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research.” Those orders included specific appropriations commitments including a $12 billion congressional request, a $200 million NIH budget commitment for fiscal year 2025, and a $100 million ARPA-H commitment for women’s health research and development.