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NEW YORK, NY – In recognition of National Women’s Health Week (May 10 – 16, 2026), Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, is leading a group of 28 organizations sending a joint letter urging Congress to protect funding for research that helps identify and address women’s unique health challenges. The letter recognizes the sustained, bipartisan leadership of Senators Susan Collins and Patty Murray, and Representatives Tom Cole and Rosa DeLauro, in championing funding for biomedical research, including women’s health research, to address pressing public health challenges. A full list of the organizations can be found below.
Women’s health research remains chronically understudied and underfunded even though women represent more than half of the United States population and gender differences affect the screening, diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and many autoimmune diseases. In 2025, there was a 31 percent drop in the number of projects funded by the National Institutes of Health that included the word “women.” The resulting termination of studies of diseases and conditions that disproportionately impact women threatens to reverse decades of progress.
“For years, advocates have fought to include women in clinical trials, increase funding for studies of conditions that disproportionately affect women and collect data that would help us understand sex-based health differences,” said Hadassah National President Carol Ann Schwartz. “Cutting funds for women’s health research not only risks creating devastating research gaps that scientists have worked for decades to close but will also have real impacts on the future of scores of women across the country. Hadassah and its partners call on Congress to prevent these frightening outcomes by prioritizing the funding of lifesaving women’s health research.”
In the letter, the 28 organizations urge Congress to restore funding for studies that examine the ways in which certain medical conditions uniquely affect women and how women’s responses to treatment differ from men’s.
The letter was signed by Hadassah, Alliance for Aging Research, Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Impact Movement (AIM), Association of Jewish Psychologists, Caregiver Action Network, FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered, I Was Supposed to Have a Baby, Jofa (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance), LEAD Coalition (Leaders Engaged on Alzheimer's Disease), Lewy Body Dementia Resource Center, Miles for Migraine, National Council of Jewish Women, National Women's Political Caucus, PUAH, Rabbinical Assembly, RESOLVE: The National Infertility & Family Building Association, SCAD (Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection) Alliance, Sharsheret, The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, The Balm In Gilead, Inc., Tigerlily Foundation, Union for Reform Judaism, USCJ, Women of Reform Judaism, Women's Health Advocates, Women's League for Conservative Judaism and Yesh Tikva.
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