The White House has a big job to tackle: identifying exactly how much research is getting done across the federal government on women’s health.

The work is part of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, and in a talk at NIH, Chair Carolyn Mazure highlighted finding “common data elements” of women’s health research as a key piece of the group’s work.

“I think they could have a huge impact on research because if they’re done well, they provide the opportunity to characterize various studies, various participants, and other ways in which we would understand across the federal government–who’s funding research on what aspects of women’s health,” Mazure said at meeting of a women’s health advisory committee at NIH. “I think it would open up a whole new area in which we could look at well-done research, but look at it in a wider scope.”

Does Anybody Know All the Women’s Health Research That’s Happening?

It may sound simple, but the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on medical research across agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department, the CDC, the FDA, and more. And without a centralized focus on women’s health—coupled with assumptions of years past that studying men covered the entire population, since they didn’t have pesky menstrual cycles that could interfere with research—that means there could be information out there that researchers are missing.

In March, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that aims to use the power of the federal government to improve women’s health. A big focus of the executive order is integrating research and data across all those agencies, including things like having standard language on advancing women’s health on the applications scientists submit for grants.

“Outside the NIH, CDC is doing important work, SAMSA is doing important work, all these agencies now could work together in a much more uniform way. So that’s one thing that we’re doing in terms of implementing further,” Mazure said. As outlined in the order, she will run a working group with NIH’s Janine Clayton to “ensure that there’s interagency alignment across these initiatives, because we don’t want everybody doing it just a little bit differently,” she said.

Next Stop, Congress

Mazure also said the White House group would be heading to Capitol Hill next.

“The other thing that’s really important is we’re going to start working directly with Congress,” Mazure told the NIH group. “So that would mean briefings with various people who have now already approached us and said this is something of interest to us.”

Mazure said they were hopeful to be able to work with members, regardless of party.

“Historically, in the Congress, there has been the capacity to make commonly advantageous decision on education and health, and we’re hoping that still exists today to some degree.”