Dr Secord on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Assessment of Women’s Health Research at the NIH

"The Office for Women's Health Research has done a fantastic job, and the NICHD, which is the institute focused on child health to human development, also has a branch for gynecologic health. However, it just wasn't sufficient to meet this really urgent, overwhelming need."

Angeles Alvarez Secord, MD, MHSc, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, Duke Cancer Institute, discusses findings from the consensus report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee.

Research on women’s health remains significantly understudied. As such and under the directive of Congress, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women’s Health requested the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to audit the state of women’s health research at the NIH. The findings, which were published in Obstetrics & Gynecology in January 2025, and entitled: A New Way Forward for Women’s Health Research at the National Institutes of Health, were several-fold. They highlighted a substantial funding inequity, with 7.9% of the total NIH grant budget for the 2023 fiscal year allocated to women’s health research––a dramatic drop from 9.7% in 2013; a need for improved strategic NIH-wide priority setting, oversight, and adherence to existing policies to support women’s health research; a need for a specific institute for research on conditions specific to women’s health; and a need for sufficient training and additional funding to grow and retain the women’s health research workforce.

The report represents a critical call to address these gaps in women’s research so that women and individuals assigned female at birth can enjoy healthier lives with better quality of life, according to Secord. Additionally, the inequities in funding across women’s health domains were an apparent finding, according to Secord, who explains that breast cancer has far more resources than gynecologic cancers despite the fact that endometrial and uterine cancers are associated with a high mortality rate. Moreover, the incidence and mortality rates of these cancers are increasing, yet funding for these cancers remains one of the lowest, according to Secord. And research on women’s health doesn’t stop there. Other areas requiring attention are that of fibroids, endometriosis, and vulvodynia, Secord adds, stating that one of the next steps may involve a structure overhaul to better allocate resources appropriately.