Teresa K. Woodruff, PhD is a strong advocate for personalized medicine to start with the health of women. She commends the Biden White House for launching the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. According to Woodruff, when women’s health is given priority, it leads to better well-being, improved generational health and promotes fairness.
Woodruff’s research years ago revealed that sex as a biological variable was not adequately considered in most published papers. This results in an imbalanced pipeline that favors male health from bench discovery through therapeutic intervention. The Biden White House initiative aims to address this issue by promoting individual health across different areas such as heart health, immune health and microbiome.
The focus on women’s health will also lead to better generational health for future generations. Maternal health is crucial in ensuring this, and the White House initiative will tackle maternal mortality rates and provide enhanced healthcare services for women before, during and after pregnancy.
In addition to these benefits, Woodruff believes that prioritizing women’s health will bring about fundamental fairness by addressing longstanding disparities in healthcare related to women’s issues. When women’s health is given top priority, everyone benefits – not just as a group but also individually.