It is time to make women’s health science a top priority

Leslee Shaw, PhD Director, The Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute Professor, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science, Cardiology and Population Health Science and Policy

There has been a recent focus on women’s health, and what is striking is the paucity of medical knowledge available to practicing clinicians to guide everyday decision-making with their female patients. At Icahn Mount Sinai, we have decided that revolutionary ideas and targeted research are the key to rectifying challenges women face in health care.

We have created a dedicated Women’s Health Research Institute that seeks to link all stages of a woman’s life to provide a more comprehensive view of disease precursors and identify novel strategies for early intervention—the important means to improve the lives of women. By creating an institute that has dedicated programs from birth to death, we bring together scientists and physicians who learn from one another’s expertise and understand the varying causes of disorders like cancer or cardiovascular disease. Our research teams include scientists with wide-ranging skills such as the use of artificial intelligence methods to explore electronic health records, or interfacing obstetrics with cardiology to form a better understanding of hypertension in women. Early-stage illnesses, such as pregnancy-related hypertension or diabetes, lead to lifelong patterns of uncontrolled blood pressure and glucose and contribute to many adverse complications of stroke, heart attack or heart failure.

For all conditions, there are many precursor features that, once identified, can lead to great advances in diagnosis and treatment. Putting together these intricate patterns of risk features requires pioneering research led by internationally renowned scientists who focus on thinking longitudinally about the woman—across the lifespan. This would allow links to form between common chronic conditions, including cancer and cardiovascular disease, and help us find novel associations with disorders such as depression.

For women, early detection has an immeasurable benefit in preventing advancing disease and early death. The ultimate goal is for women to live their lives fully across all stages of their lives. However, research is way behind, and our knowledge gaps in women’s health are too wide — contributing to unnec-

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essary illness and death. Inadequacies of care for women have been reported for nearly 30 years, and we believe that it is time for this to change.

For women’s health scientists and physicians, research innovation requires challenging all our existing knowledge and creating novel approaches to unearth sex-based mechanisms across diseases. We propose that a newly revised approach to women’s health research is possible and will help to realize major strides in improving the health and well-being of women.