The Trump administration has promised to restore the financing of a historical study on Health of women A few days after the researchers leading to the study announced that their funding had been reduced – news that prompted medical experts and scientists.
On Friday, the United States Ministry of Health and Social Services declared in a statement in ABC News that it would restore the funding of Women’s Health Initiative, a study of 30 years over 160,000 women who led to discoveries of women’s health, from cancer and hormone therapy to chronic diseases, aging and osteoporosis.
“These studies represent essential contributions to our best understanding of women’s health. Although the NIH has initially exceeded its internal objectives of contract reduction, we are now working to fully restore the funding of these essential research efforts,” the agency said in a press release, referring to the National Institutes of Health, the agency within the HHS which sung the study. “The NIH remains deeply determined to advance public health thanks to a rigorous research in gold and we take immediate measures to ensure the continuity of these studies.”
Researchers leading the health initiative of women, or Whi, announcement Earlier this week, they had been informed of the HHS would terminate contracts for the four regional study centers in late September. The funding of the study center of the study of the study would continue until January 2026, according to the researchers, then would remain uncertain.
Garnet Anderson, Ph.D., principal researcher of the WHI Clinical Coordinatting Center of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, said on Friday that the center had not been confirmed by the NIH that the financing of the study would be restored.
She added that even if she hopes that the financing of the WHI is restored, she also fears that this will happen at the expense of funding for “other equally deserving studies”.
“The decision-making process is now opaque,” Anderson told ABC News by e-mail. “It is not clear that we get the best return to our investment – prioritize and support research on the most important questions of public health and the most promising scientific opportunities.”
In this July 21, 2007, photo file, the building of the Department of American Health and Social Services is presented in Washington, DC
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Anderson’s work on WHI in the past 30 years included research on hormone therapy and women.
Additional discoveries resulting from decades of data collected by WHI include major information on the prevention of chronic diseases in women; slowdown in memory loss; Prevent and treat breast, ovary and colorectal cancers in women; And a better understanding of how conditions earlier in life such as pregnancy, preeclampsia and gestational diabetes have an impact on women later in life, according to Dr. Joann E. Manson, one of the main long -term researchers in the WHI.
“This is the most important and revolutionary study of women’s health, and we learn so much about the prevention of chronic diseases, healthy aging, the duration of health of extension, years of life that are free from major chronic diseases with good memory and good cognition and mobility, and quality of life,” said Manson, who also declared ABC News on ABC News on Thursday.
Manson said that the research results that WHI continues to produce have not only shaped public health guidelines and clinical health guidelines, which means that doctors advisor to patients offer patients, but have also shaped a generation of women’s health researchers.
“There have been more than 5,000 investigators who have been involved in publications and science, and it will be difficult to keep this together,” she said about the potential impact of financing cuts. “In addition, the WHI has played a huge role in the training and mentoring of the next generation of women’s health researchers and healthy aging that is likely to be disrupted.”
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Manson and other researchers have noted that the sudden announcement of financing cuts and now the possible reversal to restore funding have launched their work in chaos.
“We have blood samples, literally hundreds of thousands of blood samples, which have been taken over the years. Samples – it is not very clear.”
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On Friday, Manson told ABC News that she had not received a confirmation from the NIH that the financing of the study would continue.
A third regional center, located at the Wexner Medical Center in Ohio State University, also told ABC News on Friday that he had not been informed by the NIH of a decision to restore funding.
Dr. Marian Neujah, Senior WHI researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, said one of the main functions of the regional study centers, whose funding was initially to be dismissed in September, is to continuously collect data from tens of thousands of women still registered.
“There are not many studies that have such an important database of elderly women. We have something like 13,000 women over 90 years of age and some up to 108,” Neuhouja News told ABC News on Thursday. “We have to learn more about these women – which keeps them healthy, which endangers them, how people can stay alive independently. This information helps clinicians to interact with patients.”
She added women registered in the WHI, “they want to be studied. They want to be part of the answer.”
Experts like Neuhihon note that the work of the WHI is partly because recently three decades ago, women were not required to be included in medical research.
In the 1970s, for example, the first clinical studies on the effects of estrogens – the sex hormone responsible for female physical characteristics and reproduction – were carried out on men.
It was only with the passage From the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act in 1993, signed by the president of the time, Bill Clinton, that the inclusion of women and people of color has become required in the research funded by the federal government.
