President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Monday unveiled an initiative to improve women’s health, making a rare high-profile joint appearance as the president and his party face eroding support among female voters ahead of the midterm elections.
The initiative establishes a new division at the National Institutes of Health and a White House task force to coordinate government efforts and sharpen focus on medical challenges that disproportionately affect women, such as osteoporosis and endometriosis.
The first lady credited scientific advances and changing social norms for the launch of the initiative, elements of which echo a Biden administration effort. 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.
“Previous generations fought for women’s rights,” she said. “Our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest.”
Melania Trump did not specify what women’s health conditions she hoped the initiative would address. She noted that female health issues that were once “taboo” are now being discussed.
Prominent celebrities and popular podcasters have increasingly been discussing topics like fertility and menopause. Actress Halle Berry, former first lady Michelle Obama and actress Naomi Watts have openly discussed the hot flashes and other symptoms they experienced in menopause and perimenopause. Journalist Katie Couric has been talking about an upcoming documentary project called “Hormonal!” that will investigate the neglect of women’s health care across their lifespan.
The White House is tapping into that zeitgeist as polling shows female voters could play a decisive role in determining control of Congress in the midterms. Trump’s overall approval rating stands at 33 percent, dropping to 30 percent among women, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted this month. Women are also six percentage points more likely than men to say they strongly disapprove of the president, and 61 percent say they would prefer to see Democrats control Congress.
Trump won the majority of votes among White women in 2024. But his approval is even sinking among that demographic, standing at 45 percent among White women without college degrees and 29 percent among those with degrees, according to Post polling.
The polling shows a familiar challenge for Republicans. Female voters helped propel Democrats to sweeping gains in the 2018 midterms, when backlash against Trump contributed to Republicans losing control of the House.
The first lady on Monday also laid out her “five pillars” for women’s health innovation, including the use of artificial intelligence to accelerate medical discoveries.
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
Nicholas Clemens, a spokesman for the first lady, told The Washington Post that she drove the order from “start to finish.”
The president signed an executive order Monday establishing the effort, and the new task force, co-led by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., immediately held its first meeting after the event.
Trump did not appear to be aware of the NIH’s existing office of women’s health research.
“When I heard about it, I said, ‘Are you sure they don’t have that?’” Trump said, recalling a conversation with his wife. “‘What? Who the hell wouldn’t have a woman’s health division?’ Melania said, ‘They don’t have it.’”
Democrats said they supported the new work and said it should be bipartisan.
“The Trump administration appears to be building on work that began and was supercharged under the Biden administration after President Joe Biden and the first lady established the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research,” Katie Keith, a former Biden White House official who helped oversee that initiative, wrote in an email.
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 the question of which party is more trusted to handle health care costs and coverage.
At the Rose Garden event, Trump recognized the wives of many top Cabinet officials, as well as Wiles, who said last month that she is cancer-free after receiving a breast cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
Trump’s initiative 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.
Keith, the former Biden official, compared the Trump administration’s announcement on women’s health research to staffing and spending cuts across public health and scientific agencies.
“This effort is being announced while the Trump administration has caused widespread chaos and cuts at the NIH, National Science Foundation, and other major research agencies — none of which serves women, their families, or the American people,” she wrote.
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