The Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR) is a national non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. SWHR is the thought leader in research on biological sex differences in disease and is dedicated to transforming women's health through science, advocacy, and education. SWHR's mission is to advance women’s health through science, policy, and education while promoting research on sex differences to optimize women’s health. SWHR's vision is to make women's health mainstream. Founded in 1990 by Florence Haseltine, PhD, MD, SWHR aims to bring national attention to the need for the appropriate inclusion of women and historically underrepresented minority populations in major medical research studies and the need for more information about diseases and conditions affecting women exclusively, predominantly, or differently than men. It also promotes the analysis of research data for sex, racial, and ethnic differences; and informs women, health care providers, and policy makers about contemporary women's health issues through media outreach, briefings, conferences, and special events. As a result of SWHR's work, women are now regularly included in medical research and clinical trials; scientists are researching the ways in which health conditions and diseases affect men and women differently and why. Through SWHR's use of evidence-based research and multi-pronged policy and public education efforts, as well as the involvement of health care providers and policy makers dedicated to improving women's health, sex differences is now a national priority.
History SWHR was founded by Dr. Florence Haseltine as the Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research in 1990. When Dr. Haseltine began working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she was told that her "role was to champion the field of obstetrics and gynecology," which at the time were under-represented in research. In 1985, NIH lacked sufficient in-house expertise and funding for academic scientists. When her friend, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, developed ovarian cancer, Dr. Haseltine seized the opportunity to promote the need for more research into conditions affecting women. In the spring of 1989, Dr. Haseltine gathered friends and colleagues from medical and scientific organizations across the country to address this critical issue. They congregated at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and agreed on the need not only for more gynecological research at NIH but also for research regarding women's health in general. This meeting gave rise to SWHR. In 1990, due to biases in biomedical research, the health of American women was at risk. SWHR's first Board of Directors made it their priority to confront this injustice. They worked with the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, its Executive Director Leslie Primer, and Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) to persuade the General Accounting Office (GAO; now the Government Accountability Office) to address the issue. They recommended that GAO evaluate NIH's policies and practices regarding the inclusion of women and minorities in clinical trials. SWHR ensured that its dedicated leadership included a diverse group of health care providers and others concerned with research and health care equity, to provide a range of perspectives. Included in the initial gathering at ACOG and later on the first SWHR Board were physicians and researchers specializing in cardiology, mental health, and obstetrics-gynecology, as well as nurses, lawyers, and public policy advocates involved and interested in women's health. In 1993, SWHR opened its official headquarters in Washington, D.C., and hired its first professional staff. Phyllis Greenberger, MSW, was selected as the first executive director. The GAO audit was successfully released at an NIH re-authorization hearing in June 1990. It concluded that the NIH policy of 1986, which encouraged the inclusion of women in clinical trials, had been poorly communicated and misunderstood within NIH and the research community at large. Additionally, it was applied inconsistently across Institutes and was only applied to extramural research (research conducted outside NIH). The GAO report concluded that there was "…no readily accessible source of data on the demographics of NIH study populations." This made it impossible to determine if NIH was enforcing its own recommendations.
Activities SWHR maintains three programmatic areas to accomplish its mission:
Scientific Policy Education
Science SWHR is elevating the collective understanding of health disparities facing women and how biological sex, gender, and hormones affect health across the lifespan. SWHR often convenes working groups for each of its programs and hosts scientific roundtables throughout the year to encourage dialogue about research, treatment, access, and education across women’s health areas. SWHR established a series of networks to foster interdisciplinary insights on women’s health and biological sex differences; these networks have evolved throughout SWHR’s decades of work. SWHR’s current networks are in the following areas:
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