Our speaker is Donna Roddy, RN.
Most of you know that for decades, men were the only subject of health studies. It was assumed that research using men would also apply to women. But did you know that the Women's Health Equity Act wasn't passed until 1990? Here's the story.

In the late 1980s, a group of women’s health professionals organized for change. These founding members of the Society for Women’s Health Research (formerly the Society for the Advancement of Women’s Health Research) were researchers, lobbyists, activists, doctors and nurses, and administrators who were convinced that the health of American women was at risk due to biases in biomedical research.

In the summer of 1990, the fledging all-volunteer Society was the force behind a landmark event. The previous year, at the suggestion of the Society’s leadership, the Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues had asked the General Accounting Office, the watchdog agency for Congress, to investigate the progress the National Institutes of Health had made in implementing its 1986 policy encouraging the inclusion of women as subjects in clinical research. The report found that little, if any, progress had been made. On June 18, 1990, congressional hearings were held. Follow-up coverage in the press, generated by the Society’s efforts, reported the GAO’s findings. Public outrage fueled the work of congressional champions.

A month after the GAO report, the Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues introduced the Women’s Health Equity Act (WHEA) of 1990. This legislative response consisted of twenty separate bills to improve women’s health research, access to health care, and disease prevention services. The following day, WHEA’s chief Senate sponsor, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), attached three provisions creating an Office for Women’s Health Research (OWHR) at NIH, requiring that women be included in clinical trials, and establishing five contraceptive and infertility research centers to legislation reauthorizing NIH. Faced with the prospect of swift congressional action, the NIH quickly issued a strengthened policy and created a new Office of Research on Women’s Health to coordinate women’s health research activities at the office.

Since those early events, both the Society and the field of women’s health research have grown enormously. In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration issued new guidelines regulating women’s participation in pre-market clinical trials. Also in 1993, the Society worked with the Clinton Administration and Members of Congress to pass the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 that was signed by the President and explicitly requires the inclusion of women in federally funded clinical research. The Society for Women’s Health Research remains a leader in the effort to identify and gather support for important new areas of research in women’s health. More information about the Society for Women's Health Research can be found here: http://www.womenshealthresearch.org

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