Teresa K. Woodruff, PhD is a strong advocate for personalized medicine, and she believes that it should start with the health of women. She praises the Biden White House for announcing the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, which she believes will lead to better personal well-being, ensure generational health, and promote fundamental fairness.
Woodruff has been studying women’s health for years and has published work that highlights the issue of sex as a biological variable not being included in most published papers. This means that the entire pipeline of work from bench discovery through therapeutic intervention is skewed in a male direction. The Biden White House initiative aims to address this issue by promoting individual health in different aspects such as heart health, immune health, and the microbiome.
The focus on women’s health will also lead to better generational health for those born after this paradigm-shifting initiative. Maternal health is only ensured by a focus on women, and the White House initiative will address the maternal mortality rate and provide better health services for women before, during, and after pregnancy.
Finally, Woodruff believes that prioritizing women’s health will bring about fundamental fairness and address the lack of improvement in issues related to women’s health. When everyone benefits as a group and as individuals, it leads to a more equitable society where everyone has access to quality healthcare regardless of their gender.