Trump Orders New NIH Division, Task Force on Women's Health — SkimNews
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- President Trump signed the executive order creating a new NIH division on women's health, which must be established within 90 days, and a White House task force whose first session convened the same day.
- The new NIH division will work alongside — not replace — the existing Office of Research on Women's Health, coordinating research on understudied conditions across life stages, boosting inclusion of women in clinical trials, and enforcing sex-based biological variable accountability.
- First Lady Melania Trump introduced the initiative Monday, saying the division will establish "a new standard for women's health," while Trump appeared to go off-script marveling that a women's health division hadn't already existed at NIH.
- White House task force chair Susie Wiles recently completed breast cancer treatment; the task force's other members include HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas, and newly confirmed CDC Director Erica Schwartz.
- NIH deputy director Nicole Kleinstreuer had previewed the overhaul in June at a Yale conference, predicting a fall refresh of the agency's strategic plan for women's health research with "explicit" emphasis on data science and innovative methods.
- HHS will cover the task force's administrative costs, but funding specifics for the new NIH division were not disclosed — notably, women's health grants had been flagged for special review at NIH and academic research was "paralyzed" by funding cuts since Trump returned to the White House.
- The health gap the order targets is stark: women are seven times more likely than men to have a heart condition misdiagnosed or be sent home mid-heart-attack (2000 study), and a 2025 Science Advances review found they face higher adverse drug reaction rates and less effective chronic pain treatment.
Why it matters: The order formalizes a women's health arm of NIH that researchers say should have existed for decades, yet it lands at agencies that simultaneously triggered special reviews on grants containing the word "women" and slashed academic research budgets. With no disclosed funding for the new division beyond keeping the existing Office of Research on Women's Health intact, the order's payoff depends on whether HHS actually routes new appropriations to trials and treatment — material for patients whose heart attacks, strokes, and adverse drug reactions have been historically underdiagnosed because of the biology gap.
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