Yale University Scholar to Lead White House’s New Women’s Health Research Initiative

The White House has announced the establishment of the Women’s Health Research Initiative within the Office of the First Lady. The initiative aims to improve women’s health in the United States by accelerating research on the unique health needs of women across their lifespans and therefore fundamentally change how the nation approaches and funds women’s health research. This new initiative will be led by First Lady Jill Biden, who has long championed women’s health, and the White House Gender Policy Council.

The initiative will be chaired by Carolyn Mazure, an esteemed leader in the field of women’s health research. Dr. Mazure has been serving as the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor in Women’s Health Research and professor of psychiatry and of psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. Her research contributions have focused on depression, the single greatest cause of disability for women in the U.S. and globally, including the sex-and-gender-specific relationship of stress to depression and co-occurring addictive behaviors such as smoking and opioid use and misuse.

Janine A. Clayton, director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institute of Health, stated that “women’s health research is critical to NIH’s mission to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and to apply that knowledge to enhance health. Incorporating women’s lived experiences, identities, and other social determinants of health into the research enterprise will lead to science advancements. We look forward to collaborating with the White House to promote research that involves women across the lifespan, considers the influence of sex and gender, and fosters health equity to ensure that all women receive evidence-based disease prevention and treatment tailored to their unique needs and circumstances.”