Q&A: Liz Powell and Elizabeth Garner

Suppose again to 1993. What do you bear in mind?

Seeing the film Jurassic Park on the massive display? Listening to Whitney Houston’s “I Will At all times Love You” on the radio? Browsing the World Huge Net for the primary time?

1993 was additionally the 12 months the federal government started requiring that the Nationwide Institutes of Well being embrace girls in medical analysis.

Yep, you heard that proper. It was simply 32 years in the past that the NIH Revitalization Act handed mandating that ladies be included in medical research and different analysis.

The landmark invoice was an enormous step ahead, propelled by girls’s well being advocates. However nonetheless to at the present time, solely 8% to 11% of the NIH grants at present fund girls’s well being.

This element was not misplaced on Liz Powell. After working as an lawyer, lobbying in Congress for 25 years and operating a bipartisan agency, G2G Consulting, she began Women’s Health Advocates (WHA) in 2024. WHA is a bipartisan coalition with a mission to assist form the legislative course of, educate authorities decision-makers on girls’s well being and safe funding for developments in girls’s well being.

We talked with Powell and Elizabeth Garner, M.D., MPH, a founding member of WHA, concerning the group’s first 12 months and the way they’re holding the highlight on girls’s well being.

This interview has been frivolously edited for readability and size.

HealthyWomen: Liz, can we return to the start and speak about why you began Ladies’s Well being Advocates?

Liz: I’ve achieved so much within the well being house and attempt to carry life science improvements to market by working with the federal government to speed up entry to authorities funding.

I might have a pair shoppers right here and there that have been bearing on the girl’s well being house. Each time you get a brand new consumer, you find out about completely different gaps the place unmet wants want options. I spotted this isn’t only a one off right here and there — there’s an actual sample occurring. So I helped manage these two new coalitions and efforts to do higher advocacy and training on girls’s well being and realized we wanted one thing because the umbrella for all of it. And that is what Ladies’s Well being Advocates is.

We launched in February of this 12 months. However like I stated, it’s the fruits of labor of many people, together with medical doctors — Dr. Garner has been an enormous advocate in girls’s well being — and there have been many, many individuals working actually laborious within the girls’s well being house for a very long time.

What Ladies’s Well being Advocates is attempting to do is carry all that collectively for advocacy, all features of the ecosystem. So, whether or not you are a researcher or clinician, CEO, entrepreneur, investor, affected person — regardless of the place you might be on this ecosystem, there’s a spot for you at Ladies’s Well being Advocates.

We need to change legal guidelines, we need to improve funding, work with the federal government and ensure politicians perceive the affect their choices have on the well being of girls.

HealthyWomen: Dr. Garner, what was it about WHA that made you need to get entangled?

Elizabeth Garner: Most of it was that I actually like Liz (laughs). We have recognized one another for some time.

Every part she stated is what I used to be considering — and going by way of. First, as a girls’s well being doctor, I used to be annoyed by the shortage of options for thus many circumstances like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and fibroids, and you’ll simply maintain occurring and on.

I noticed girls simply actually struggling — and their households. I felt like we simply wanted a lot extra. After which I left medical drugs as a result of I hoped if I acquired into trade, perhaps I might have a much bigger affect. And sadly what I discovered was that we do not have the options I wished as a doctor as a result of there simply hasn’t been the analysis.

Trendy drugs was actually developed for male physiology, and it was assumed that ladies have been small males. Due to that, we do not truly perceive the basic science that is underlying all of those circumstances. And that hurts from a therapeutic standpoint but additionally from a diagnostic standpoint. So we do not even have good methods even to diagnose quite a lot of the circumstances I’ve talked about . Ladies go years earlier than they know what’s flawed. We nonetheless do not know why girls are completely different from males in some ways.

That is nonetheless occurring and there’s been a scarcity of innovation, funding, and many others in girls’s well being. That is actually why we need to carry anybody, everybody into this group — that means not simply girls however males. We’ve quite a lot of male supporters, however when it comes to historical past, males have been the deciders of the place {dollars} go relating to well being, so over time, girls’s points have not been thought of to be as essential as males’s points. By bringing this complete ecosystem collectively, we are able to actually make a distinction. And that is why I joined.

HealthyWomen: Inform us extra concerning the wants WHA addresses and something noteworthy you’d wish to highlight.

Liz: I might say — placing on my lobbying hat — to be an efficient lobbyist, to have tangible outcomes, I need to leap onto a practice that is already transferring. I need to do normal training advocacy concerning the long-term good points that we’d like in girls’s well being. Effectively, that practice known as appropriations.

Yearly, the Home and Senate should do these appropriations payments. That, plus the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act, will get achieved yearly it doesn’t matter what. The appropriations is the place we put quite a lot of focus, we lobbied our tails off and we acquired in there to get language and funding strains included within the appropriations payments, and we’re truly seeing outcomes. Our success was a mix of my lobbying crew, which is me and my of us at G2G Consulting, in addition to the letter writing marketing campaign.

We might draft letters for people and acquired our grassroots advocates who’re in all 50 states writing letters. We additionally manage Capitol Hill occasions, and we had our first occasion in April targeted on Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers (CMS) reimbursement discrimination as a result of, on common, the identical surgical procedure carried out on a feminine and a male affected person has a 30% decrease reimbursement fee if it is a feminine affected person.

Doing a congressional briefing opened quite a lot of eyes. Lots of people began to ask questions and need to work with us, in order that’s nice.

On Could 21, we did the first-ever girls’s well being Capitol Hill Day the place we addressed all of girls’s well being with nice bipartisan turnout from members of Congress.

In July, we had our breast most cancers Hill day. Each time we do these, we’re bringing advocates to Washington to share their tales to form the legislative course of. And the outcomes that we’re seeing all got here out within the summertime and confirmed that the language we had lobbied for, just like the definition of girl’s well being, which is circumstances that solely, disproportionately and/or in another way affect the well being of girls, head to toe all through their lifespan, is definitely within the invoice on the home aspect.

Our funding request for a $30 million improve for the Workplace of Analysis on Ladies’s Well being has been included within the Senate invoice and within the Home invoice; it is a $26 million improve. So, both manner, that workplace goes to get a rise.

So, all these efforts are actually producing outcomes. We’ve nonetheless acquired a methods to go, however at the very least we’re seeing one thing in lower than a 12 months.

Garner: Liz is the coverage wonk. I’m so not and I am studying, however simply from my perspective, one other factor I feel that WHA is clearly doing is elevating consciousness.

As we go across the nation, increasingly of us are coming in and it is superb — as a result of we all know these things, however most individuals do not. So, we speak about information round lack of innovation and NIH funding and all of that and enterprise capital funding. We’re doing quite a lot of training as nicely, and that is actually essential and can assist us as we proceed to speak about coverage.

HealthyWomen: What are the group’s objectives for 2026?

Liz: We’re heading into an election 12 months, in order that can be an enormous issue. As a result of we aren’t a nonprofit, we are able to interact in politics as a lot as coverage.

We’re going to be monitoring what is going on on on the coverage entrance. We’ll be doing extra appropriations work subsequent 12 months. After which we’ll even be monitoring the candidate, and candidates which are in what are known as “persuadable districts,” the place the individual wins by wherever from 1% to five%. These are persuadable districts that might flip both manner. And that is the place there’s essentially the most energy in shifting and making girls high of precedence. So, we’ll give attention to these — we’ll monitor these.

We actually need to do a complete get out and vote for girls’s well being marketing campaign. We’re already working with Beyond the Paper Gown on doing a complete collection to coach folks on girls’s well being points and why it is essential to exit and vote.

Garner: I feel the attention half, as I used to be mentioning, goes to be actually essential but additionally homing in on our technique going ahead goes to be actually essential to maintain transferring ahead.

HealthyWomen: How do supporting organizations just like the Society for Ladies’s Well being Analysis and HealthyWomen play an essential function in advancing these objectives?

Liz: It’s important. The Society for Ladies’s Well being Analysis is doing a number of nice advocacy work, however they’re nonprofit so they’re restricted in how a lot they will do. And so quite a lot of instances that we crew up once they’re engaged on one thing and we are able to amplify it.

We’ve signed on to letters that they despatched to Congress, for instance, and we have written letters that they’ve signed on to. There’s quite a lot of very supportive partnership and collaboration that occurs.

Garner: There’s simply nobody group that may do that alone. And so we discuss so much about bringing collectively your entire ecosystem so everyone seems to be working collectively.

HealthyWomen and SWHR present girls with info and protected areas for girls to inform their tales. And that’s what drives folks. That is what drives policymakers, traders and different stakeholders to take motion once they hear these tales.

HealthyWomen: How can readers get entangled?

Garner: We’re doing occasions across the nation, so we positively invite folks to return to an occasion and see what’s taking place and be taught and meet like-minded folks.

Liz: Individuals may enroll on our web site to hitch our neighborhood — I ship legislative updates and quite a lot of insider info most individuals don’t have with girls’s well being at all times being the main target.

HealthyWomen: Is there the rest you’d like so as to add that we haven’t talked about?

Garner: I’ve one factor that I feel it is at all times essential to speak about, and that’s variety. We’re a really various group. And it’s so essential as a result of, for all the problems that we have been speaking about, they’re at all times worse for girls of shade, for different underserved communities and so forth. So, we have to be sure that, as we go alongside, we’re together with everybody in all that we do.