ICYMI from Science: “NIH guts its first and largest study centered on women”
ICYMI: In Senate Forum on NIH Research, Senator Murray Highlights How Trump and Elon’s Devastating Funding Cuts and Mass Layoffs are Putting Lifesaving Research At Risk
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chairof the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and former Chair of the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education & Related Agencies Subcommittee released the following statement on the Trump administration gutting the historic Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), the largest National Institutes of Health (NIH) effort studying the health needs of women. WHI has enrolled more than 160,000 participants in clinical trials and tracked the health of many thousands more over more than three decades since its inception in the early 1990s. There are currently over 42,000 participants that are actively involved. WHI’s findings have had a major influence on women’s health care, reducing rates of cancer and other diseases, and influencing clinical guidelines for multiple health factors.
Yesterday, WHI investigators were informed that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will terminate WHI Regional Center (RC) contracts at the end of their current fiscal year, September 2025. According to the WHI Funding Announcement issued yesterday, the WHI Clinical Coordinating Center, which is based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, will continue operations until January 2026, after which time its funding remains uncertain. “The full implications of these funding cuts are still being determined, but these contract terminations will significantly impact ongoing research and data collection—especially the detailed participant health event data collected by RC staff. The loss of this critical data stream would severely limit WHI’s ability to generate new insights into the health of older women, one of the fastest-growing segments of our population,” the notice read.
“This is a devastating loss for women’s health research. It’s unacceptable and truly tragic that the Trump administration has decided to pull the plug on one of the most influential studies in the world and one that has led to enormous breakthroughs in preventing chronic disease—a stated goal of HHS leadership—and helping women everywhere live healthier and longer lives.
“The Women’s Health Initiative has not only led to major advancements in our understanding of women’s health issues, especially in older women, but it has paved the way for a generation of researchers focused on women’s health—which has long been overlooked and underfunded. Now, Trump, Elon, and our pro-disease Health Secretary RFK Jr. are taking an axe to a study that has helped millions of Americans live healthier lives and have better treatment options—yet another example of how this administration is hell-bent on cutting health research to the bone without a clue and without a care for the consequences.
“Destroying the Women’s Health Initiative is an unbelievably shortsighted move that will have an immense long-term cost for our country—in undiscovered treatments and cures, the loss of vast amounts of data to improve women’s health, and a less healthy population overall.
“This is an unconscionable loss—and I am calling on every one of my colleagues, especially my Republican colleagues who understand the importance of supporting research into women’s health, to join me in demanding that the Trump administration immediately reverse course.”
Senator Murray has been leading the charge against the Trump administration’s efforts to gut lifesaving research at NIH and fire en masse more than 1,300 skilled scientists and grants administrators at the agency. When the Trump administration attempted to illegally cap indirect cost rates at 15 percent, Senator Murray immediately and forcefully condemned the move, led the entire Senate Democratic caucus in a letter decrying the proposed change, and introduced amendments to Senate Republicans’ budget resolution to reverse it, which Republicans blocked.
As a longtime appropriator and former Chair of the Senate HELP Committee, Senator Murray has always championed women’s health care and fought to boost investments in women’s health care research in particular. As the former Chair of the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education & Related Agencies Subcommittee, Senator Murray has fought for increases in women’s health research programs across NIH, including the Implementing a Maternal Health and Pregnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone (IMPROVE) Initiative and the Office of Research on Women’s Health. As the top Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee, Murray led negotiations and passage of the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016, bipartisan legislation that provided $4.8 billion over the next 10 years to invests in a wide range of health priorities including with regards to women’s health care. Murray leads and has repeatedly introduced the Jeanette Acosta Invest in Women’s Health Act, which would increase women’s access to preventive and lifesaving cancer screenings. Murray has also been a strong advocate for women veterans’ health care—transforming the VA over decades to meet the needs of women veterans, whether by authoring and passing the Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act in 2010, helping to pass the Deborah Sampson Act and MAMMO Act to address gender disparities at VA and expand access to breast cancer screening and treatment at VA, or by delivering annual funding as an appropriator to help VA provide the necessary care for women veterans.
Last year as Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray delivered a record $900 million investment in women veterans’ health care, as well as a $300 million funding boost for NIH. Senator Murray also leads landmark bipartisan legislation endorsed by Halle Berry to boost menopause research and, for the first time, coordinate the federal government’s existing programs related to menopause and mid-life women’s health. Earlier this month, Senator Murray introduced separate bipartisan legislation to require VA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to research and study the effects of menopause on women servicemembers and women veterans
Over her years as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray secured billions of dollars in increases for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, and during her time as Chair of the HELP Committee, she established the new ARPA-H research agency as part of her PREVENT Pandemics Act to advance some of the most cutting-edge research in the field.
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