In the 2024 state of the union address Biden said:

Women are more than half of our population but research on women’s health has always been underfunded.

Fact 1

The NIH 2017, 2018 and 2019 research budget breakdown is:

  • Gender neutral research: 80% of funding.
  • Women's health research: 14% of funding.
  • Men's health research: 6% of funding.

Source: Report of the Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health: 2017–2019, table 8, page 117.

In other words, Biden was lying because at least in 2017, 2018 and 2019 women's health research received more than double the funding compared to man's health research. To make things worse, Biden vowed to increase this imbalance even further:

That’s why we’re launching the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, led by Jill who is doing an incredible job as First Lady. Pass my plan for $12 Billion to transform women’s health research and benefit millions of lives across America!

Note 1

the NIH defines “Women’s health conditions,” as...

...defined in section 141 of the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 (PublicLaw 103–43), include all diseases, disorders, and conditions:

  1. That are unique to, more serious in, or more prevalent in women

  2. For which the factors of medical risk or types of medical intervention are different for women or for which it is unknown whether such factors or types are different for women

  3. With respect to which there has been insufficient clinical research involving women as subjects or insufficient clinical data on women

Source: Report of the Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health: 2021–2022

Note 2

Funding of the reproductive & maternal care is certainly justified and will be always reported as women's specific research funding - but only about 7%-10% of the women's health research was in the "Reproductive & Maternal/Child/Adolescent Health" category.

Source: Report of the Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health: 2017–2019, table 9, page 117.

Note 3

83% of all medical research in the US is funded via NIH. The other 17% may be funded via private foundations and organizations, pharmaceutical companies and other for-profit entities, or via state and local governments.

Source: https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget

Fact 2

After 2019 NIH decided to stop to calculate data on men's health research funding. This means that it is no longer possible to show that research on men’s health is grossly underfunded compared to research on women’s health. I wonder what was the motivation behind this decision.

NIH does not currently calculate or report annual funding associated with projects dedicated solely to men’s health or projects benefiting men and women.

Source: Report of the Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health: 2021–2022

Fact 3

There are no less than eight offices and official bodies focused on women's health. There are exactly zero offices focused on men's health.

Source: Creation of Offices on Women's Health at the federal level

Fact 4

Men have worse health outcomes than women. Men suffer 53.4% of all Burden of Disease.

Source: https://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-2019, H.R.5986 - Men’s Health Awareness and Improvement Act

​

Unsurprisingly, none of the fact-checking services bothered or dared to challenge this. Dem or Rep, left or right - you are not allowed to question the favouritism of women in the mainstream media: