President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he was "so proud" that a women's health research initiative he launched last year at his wife's urging has already invested nearly $1 billion because a healthy female population improves U.S. prosperity.
"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 said, referencing President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.
Trump's three conservative nominees to the Supreme Court from his first term as president voted to overturn a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. Democrats campaigned on reproductive rights and women's health issues in this year's elections.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump's transition team, said the president-elect would keep his promise to improve health in the U.S.
"President Trump campaigned on making America healthy again for ALL Americans including men, women, and children, and he will deliver on that promise," Leavitt said in an email.
Women make up half of the U.S. population, about 168 million people, but medical research into their unique health circumstances has largely been underfunded and understudied, officials have said.
First lady Jill Biden has said she brought the idea for the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research to the president after Maria Shriver, herself a women's health advocate and member of the influential Kennedy political family, brought it to her.
The first lady told the researchers, advocates, and business and philanthropic leaders attending the conference that she would keep pressing the issue.
"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."
Jill Biden said the U.S. economy loses about $1.8 billion in working time every year because of how menopause affects women. She is interested in learning more about extreme morning sickness during pregnancy.
"I heard this of a couple weeks ago and I was particularly interested because my granddaughter was going through the same thing because we're going to be great-grandparents," Jill Biden said. Granddaughter Naomi Biden Neal and her husband, Peter Neal, are expecting their first child.
Since its launch, the women's health research initiative has attracted nearly $1 billion in federal funding, including from the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health.
"In one year, everybody in this room kicked butt," Shriver said at the conference. "Not until the Bidens did anyone ever think to make women's health and research a priority for the federal government, so let that sink in."
President Biden closed the conference with a nod to the influence of his wife, who, after her remarks, sat in the front row beside their daughter, Ashley Biden, who runs a women's shelter in Philadelphia.
'You stepped up, kid," Biden told the first lady. Then he told the audience, "In case you wonder, when she speaks, I listen."
(VOA/JL)