Think back to 1993. What do you remember?
Want to see the movie Jurassic Park on the big screen? Do you hear Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” on the radio? Surfing the World Wide Web for the first time?
1993 was also the year the government began requiring the National Institutes of Health to include women in medical research.
Yes, you heard that right. It was only 32 years ago that the NIH Revitalization Act was passed, requiring the inclusion of women in clinical trials and other research.
The groundbreaking bill was a major step forward pushed by women’s health advocates. Yet to date, only 8% to 11% of NIH grants fund women’s health.
This detail is not lost on Liz Powell. After working as a lawyer, lobbying Congress for 25 years, and running a nonpartisan firm, G2G Consulting, she founded Women’s Health Advocates (WHA) in 2024.
We spoke with Powell and Elizabeth Garner, MD, MPH, a founding member of the WHA, about the organization’s first year and how they continue to put women’s health at the forefront.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
HealthyWomen: Liz, can we go back to the beginning and talk about why you started Women’s Health Advocates?
Liz: I have done a lot in healthcare and am trying to bring innovations in life sciences to market by working with the government to accelerate access to government funding.
I’ve had a few clients here and there who were involved in women’s health. Every time you acquire a new customer, you learn about different gaps for which unmet needs require solutions. I realized that this isn’t just an isolated incident here and there – there’s a real pattern. So I helped organize these two new coalitions and efforts to achieve better advocacy and education about women’s health and realized that we needed something to be an umbrella for everything. And that’s exactly what Women’s Health Advocates is.
We started in February of this year. But as I said, it is the culmination of the work of many of us, including the doctors – Dr. Garner is a huge advocate for women’s health – and there are many, many people who have been working really hard in the area of women’s health for a long time.
What Women’s Health Advocates is trying to do is bring all of that together for advocacy, all aspects of the ecosystem. Whether you are a researcher or clinician, CEO, entrepreneur, investor or patient – no matter where you are in this ecosystem, there is a place for you at Women’s Health Advocates.
We want to change laws, we want to increase funding, work with government and make sure politicians understand the impact their decisions have on women’s health.
HealthyWomen: Dr. Garner, what was it about WHA that made you want to get involved?
Elizabeth Garner: Most of it was that I really like Liz (laughs). We’ve known each other for a while.
Everything she said is what I was thinking – and experiencing. First, as a gynecologist, I have been frustrated by the lack of solutions for so many conditions such as endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and fibroids, and you can just go on and on.
I saw how women really suffered – and their families. I felt like we just needed so much more. And then I left clinical medicine because I was hoping that maybe I would have a bigger impact if I went into industry. And unfortunately, I’ve found that we don’t have the solutions that I wanted as a doctor because there just isn’t any relevant research.
Modern medicine was actually designed for male physiology and the assumption was that women were small men. Because of this, we don’t really understand the basic science underlying all of these conditions. And that hurts from both a therapeutic and diagnostic perspective. So we don’t even have good options for diagnosing many of the diseases I mentioned. It takes years for women to realize what’s going on. We still don’t know why women differ from men in many ways.
This is still the case and there is a lack of innovation, investment, etc. in the area of women’s health. That’s why we want to include everyone in this organization – not just women, but also men. We have a lot of male supporters, but throughout history men have been the decision makers of where money goes when it comes to health, so over time women’s issues have ceased to be as important as men’s issues. By bringing this entire ecosystem together, we can really make a difference. And that’s why I joined.
Healthy women: Tell us more about the needs the WHA addresses and anything notable you would like to highlight.
Liz: I would put on my lobbying hat and say: In order to be an effective lobbyist and achieve tangible results, I want to jump on a bandwagon that is already moving. I want to advocate for the long-term progress we need for women’s health across the board. Well, this move is called appropriations.
Every year the House of Representatives and Senate must produce these budget bills. That and the National Defense Authorization Act will be implemented every year, no matter what. When it comes to appropriations, we’ve put a lot of emphasis on it, we’ve pushed and gotten in there to get language and funding lines included in the budget bills, and we’re actually seeing results. Our success was a combination of my lobbying team, which consists of me and my people at G2G Consulting, as well as the letter writing campaign.
We wrote letters to the people and hired our grassroots activists to write letters in all 50 states. We also organize Capitol Hill events, and our first event in April focused on reimbursement discrimination by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as the same surgery performed on a female and a male patient has, on average, a 30% lower reimbursement rate when the patient is female.
Conducting a congressional briefing opened many eyes for me. A lot of people started asking questions and wanted to work with us, which is great.
On May 21, we held the first-ever Capitol Hill Day on Women’s Health, addressing women’s overall health with strong bipartisan participation from members of Congress.
In July we had our Breast Cancer Hill Day. Each time we do this, we bring advocates to Washington to share their stories to shape the legislative process. And the results that we’re seeing all came out over the summer and showed that the language that we had been advocating for, like defining women’s health, which are conditions that exclusively, disproportionately, and/or differentially impact women’s health from head to toe throughout their lives, is actually in the House bill.
Our funding request for a $30 million increase for the Office of Research on Women’s Health has been included in the Senate and House bills; This is an increase of $26 million. Either way, this office will be expanded.
So all these efforts actually produce results. We still have a long way to go, but at least we’ll see something in less than a year.
Garner: Liz is the political weirdo. I’m not, and I’m learning, but from my perspective I think the WHA is clearly raising awareness.
As we travel around the country, more and more people come and it’s amazing – because we know about it, but most people don’t. So we’re talking about data on lack of innovation and NIH funding and all that and venture capital funding. We also do a lot of education, and that’s really important and will help us as we continue to talk about politics.
Healthy women: What are the group’s goals for 2026?
Liz: We’re heading into an election year, so that will be an important factor. Since we are not a non-profit organization, we can also get involved politically.
We will follow what is happening on the political front. We will be doing more fundraising work next year. And then we also track the candidate and the candidates who are in what we call “winnabar districts” where the person wins between 1 and 5%. These are compelling districts that could swing either way. And this is where the greatest power lies in driving change and making women a priority. So we’re going to focus on those – we’re going to pursue them.
We really want to vote a whole round for the women’s health campaign. We’re already working on a whole series with Beyond the Paper Gown to educate people about women’s health issues and why it’s important to vote.
Garner: I think the awareness aspect, as I mentioned, will be really important, but also setting our strategy for the future will be very important to move forward.
Healthy women: What important role do supporting organizations like the Society for Women’s Health Research and HealthyWomen play in advancing these goals?
Liz: It’s critical. The Society for Women’s Health Research does a lot of great advocacy work, but it’s a nonprofit and therefore limited in what it can do. And so it often happens that when they’re working on something, we team up and we can reinforce it.
For example, we signed letters that they sent to Congress and we wrote letters that they signed. There are a lot of very supportive partnerships and collaborations.
Garner: There is simply no organization that can do this alone. That’s why we talk a lot about bringing the entire ecosystem together so that everyone works together.
HealthyWomen and SWHR provide information and safe spaces for women to tell their stories. And that’s what drives people. This is what drives policymakers, investors and other stakeholders to take action when they hear these stories.
Healthy women: How can readers get involved?
Garner: We host events all over the country, so we definitely invite people to come to an event, see what’s happening, learn something and meet like-minded people.
Liz: People can also sign up on our website to join our community – I send law updates and lots of insider information that most people don’t have, with women’s health always at the forefront.
HealthyWomen: Anything else you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about yet?
Garner: I think it’s always important to talk about one thing, and that is diversity. We are a very diverse organization. And that’s so important because despite all the problems we’ve talked about, they’re getting worse for women of color, for other underserved communities, and so on. That’s why we need to make sure we include everyone in everything we do.
