President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he is "so proud" that a women's health research initiative he launched last year at his wife's urging already has invested nearly $1 billion because having healthy women improves not only their well-being but U.S. prosperity overall.
Watch Joe and Jill Biden's remarks in the player above.
"That's a fact," he said in closing remarks at the first White House Conference on Women's Health Research. "We haven't gotten that through to the other team yet."
Biden's comment was an apparent reference to President-elect Trump and his incoming administration.
Women make up half the population in the United States, about 168 million people, but medical research largely has been conducted on men — leaving studies about the unique health needs of women underfunded and understudied.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrive to speak at the first White House Conference on Women's Health Research, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2024. Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Jill Biden brought the idea of a women's health research initiative to the president after Maria Shriver, herself an advocate for women's health and a member of the Kennedy political family, brought it to her.
The first lady told the researchers, advocates, and business and philanthropic leaders attending the first-ever White House Conference on Women's Health Research that she will keep pressing the issue after she leaves the role.
"My work doesn't stop in January when Joe and I leave this house," she said. "I will keep building alliances, like the ones that brought us here today, and I will keep pushing for funding for innovative research."