Trump Signs Executive Order Creating Women's Health Division, Task Force

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday establishing a new Women's Health Division at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a White House Women's Health Task Force.

First Lady Melania Trump, who reportedly pushed for the action, joined the President for the signing ceremony in the Rose Garden. The executive order directs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to establish the NIH division within 90 days. The division will aim to increase scientific review of women's health conditions, advance and coordinate research, and promote innovation.

The White House task force is led by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The task force is tasked with coordinating women's health policy across federal agencies, translating research into evidence-based healthcare, improving prevention and access to care, and identifying policy reforms. Melania Trump laid out a vision for a new standard for women's health in America, emphasizing modernizing care, closing research gaps, and accelerating treatments.

She listed five pillars for women's health innovation: directing research funding, using artificial intelligence for discoveries, accelerating therapeutics, ensuring affordability, and fostering open conversation. The order targets maternal health, mental health, endometriosis, fibroids, polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome (PMOS), menopause, Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, and heart disease and stroke. President Trump expressed surprise that a women's health division did not already exist, stating, "Who the hell wouldn't have a women's health division?"

The order does not include specific funding goals. The new NIH division is described as supplementing, not replacing, the agency's existing Office of Research on Women's Health.