President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Monday will announce an effort to boost women’s health, in a high-profile joint appearance that comes two weeks before the midterm elections.
The Trump administration plans to establish a new division for women’s health at the National Institutes of Health and a White House task force co-led by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., officials said.
The initiative is intended to coordinate government efforts on women’s health and sharpen focus on medical challenges that disproportionately affect women, such as osteoporosis and endometriosis.
The first lady on Monday also laid out her “five pillars” for women’s health innovation in a post on X, including the use of artificial intelligence to accelerate medical discoveries. Trump plans to sign an executive order Monday morning establishing the effort, which echoes an initiative launched by the Biden administration.
First Lady Melania Trump’s 5 PILLARS OF WOMENS HEALTH INNOVATION // 1. Direct research funding towards finding cures that affect women in a disproportionate and unique way. 2. Use super intelligence to enhance our insight of female biology and speed up medical discoveries.… https://t.co/VZoIvVMijT
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) October 19, 2026
USA Today first reported on the planned initiative.
“The inception of this EO truly originated with FLOTUS, who was engaged on this from start to finish,” Nicholas Clemens, a spokesman for the first lady, wrote in a text message.
Bipartisan majorities support investments in health research, and many Americans have raised concerns about Trump-era changes to the NIH and federal research funding, polls show. Six in 10 Americans say that federal public health agencies have cut or scaled back government funding for health and medical research too much, according to a Harvard University-de Beaumont Foundation poll conducted this spring.
Surveys have also found that Trump and Republicans have lagged behind Democrats on which party is more trusted to handle health care cost and coverage.
It was not immediately clear whether the initiative would steer new funding to the NIH, which has experienced significant staffing cuts under the Trump administration and already has an office of women’s health research.
Trump’s planned initiative also resembles past administrations’ activities.
Then-first lady Jill Biden pursued similar efforts to jump-start women’s health research, and Biden officials in November 2023 launched their own White House effort intended to coordinate a cross-government response to boost women’s health.
The Trump-era order will “expand, enhance and complement” the Biden-era order, Clemens said, adding that some parts would be overwritten.
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