Think back to 1993. What do you remember?

Seeing the movie Jurassic Park on the big screen? Listening to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” on the radio? Surfing the World Wide Web for the first time?

1993 was also the year the government began requiring that the National Institutes of Health include women in medical research.

Yep, you heard that right. It was just 32 years ago that the NIH Revitalization Act passed mandating that women be included in clinical studies and other research.

The landmark bill was a huge step forward, propelled by women’s health advocates. But still to this day, only 8% to 11% of the NIH grants currently fund women’s health.

This detail was not lost on Liz Powell. After working as an attorney, lobbying in Congress for 25 years and running a bipartisan firm, G2G Consulting, she started Women’s Health Advocates (WHA) in 2024. WHA is a bipartisan coalition with a mission to help shape the legislative process, educate government decision-makers on women’s health and secure funding for advancements in women’s health.

We talked with Powell and Elizabeth Garner, M.D., MPH, a founding member of WHA, about the organization’s first year and how they’re keeping the spotlight on women’s health.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

HealthyWomen: Liz, can we go back to the beginning and talk about why you started Women’s Health Advocates?

Liz: I’ve done a lot in the health space and try to bring life science innovations to market by working with the government to accelerate access to government funding.

I would have a couple clients here and there that were touching on the woman’s health space. Every time you get a new client, you learn about different gaps where unmet needs need solutions. I realized this is not just a one off here and there — there’s a real pattern going on. So I helped organize these two new coalitions and efforts to do better advocacy and education on women’s health and realized we needed something as the umbrella for all of it. And that’s what Women’s Health Advocates is.

We launched in February of this year. But like I said, it’s the culmination of work of many of us, including doctors — Dr. Garner has been a huge advocate in women’s health — and there have been many, many people working really hard in the women’s health space for a long time.

What Women’s Health Advocates is trying to do is bring all that together for advocacy, all aspects of the ecosystem. So, whether you’re a researcher or clinician, CEO, entrepreneur, investor, patient — no matter where you are in this ecosystem, there’s a place for you at Women’s Health Advocates.

We want to change laws, we want to increase funding, work with the government and make sure politicians understand the impact their decisions have on the health of women.

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

Elizabeth Garner: Most of it was that I really like Liz (laughs). We’ve known each other for a while.

Everything she said is what I was thinking — and going through. First, as a women’s health physician, I was frustrated by the lack of solutions for so many conditions like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and fibroids, and you can just keep going on and on.

I saw women just really suffering — and their families. I felt like we just needed so much more. And then I left clinical medicine because I was hoping if I got into industry, maybe I’d have a bigger impact. And unfortunately what I found was that we don’t have the solutions I wanted as a physician because there just hasn’t been the research.

Modern medicine was really developed for male physiology, and it was assumed that women were small men. Because of that, we don’t actually understand the fundamental science that’s underlying all of these conditions. And that hurts from a therapeutic standpoint but also from a diagnostic standpoint. So we don’t actually have good ways even to diagnose a lot of the conditions I’ve mentioned . Women go years before they know what’s wrong. We still don’t know why women are different from men in many ways.

That’s still going on and there’s been a lack of innovation, investment, etc in women’s health. That’s really why we want to bring anyone, everyone into this organization — meaning not just women but men. We have a lot of male supporters, but in terms of history, men have been the deciders of where dollars go when it comes to health, so over time, women’s issues haven’t been considered to be as important as men’s issues. By bringing this whole ecosystem together, we can really make a difference. And that’s why I joined.

HealthyWomen: Tell us more about the needs WHA addresses and anything noteworthy you’d like to spotlight.

Liz: I would say — putting on my lobbying hat — to be an effective lobbyist, to have tangible results, I want to jump onto a train that’s already moving. I want to do general education advocacy about the long-term gains that we need in women’s health. Well, that train is called appropriations.

Every year, the House and Senate have to do these appropriations bills. That, plus the National Defense Authorization Act, gets done every year no matter what. The appropriations is where we put a lot of focus, we lobbied our tails off and we got in there to get language and funding lines included in the appropriations bills, and we’re actually seeing results. Our success was a combination of my lobbying team, which is me and my folks at G2G Consulting, as well as the letter writing campaign.

We would draft letters for folks and got our grassroots advocates who are in all 50 states writing letters. We also organize Capitol Hill events, and we had our first event in April focused on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reimbursement discrimination because, on average, the same surgery performed on a female and a male patient has a 30% lower reimbursement rate if it’s a female patient.

Doing a congressional briefing opened a lot of eyes. A lot of people started to ask questions and want to work with us, so that’s great.

On May 21, we did the first-ever women’s health Capitol Hill Day where we addressed all of women’s health with great bipartisan turnout from members of Congress.

In July, we had our breast cancer Hill day. Every time we do these, we’re bringing advocates to Washington to share their stories to shape the legislative process. And the results that we’re seeing all came out in the summertime and showed that the language we had lobbied for, like the definition of woman’s health, which is conditions that solely, disproportionately and/or differently impact the health of women, head to toe throughout their lifespan, is actually in the bill on the house side.

Our funding request for a $30 million increase for the Office of Research on Women’s Health has been included in the Senate bill and in the House bill; it’s a $26 million increase. So, either way, that office is going to get an increase.

So, all those efforts are really producing results. We’ve still got a ways to go, but at least we’re seeing something in less than a year.

Garner: Liz is the policy wonk. I am so not and I’m learning, but just from my perspective, another thing I think that WHA is clearly doing is raising awareness.

As we go around the country, more and more folks are coming in and it’s amazing — because we know this stuff, but most people don’t. So, we talk about data around lack of innovation and NIH funding and all of that and venture capital funding. We’re doing a lot of education as well, and that’s really important and will help us as we continue to talk about policy.

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

Liz: We are heading into an election year, so that will be a big factor. Because we are not a nonprofit, we can engage in politics as much as policy.

We are going to be tracking what’s going on on the policy front. We’ll be doing more appropriations work next year. And then we’ll also be tracking the candidate, and candidates that are in what are called “persuadable districts,” where the person wins by anywhere from 1% to 5%. Those are persuadable districts that could flip either way. And that’s where there’s the most power in shifting and making women top of priority. So, we’ll focus on those — we’ll track those.

We really want to do a whole get out and vote for women’s health campaign. We’re already working with Beyond the Paper Gown on doing a whole series to educate people on women’s health issues and why it’s important to go out and vote.

Garner: I think the awareness part, as I was mentioning, is going to be really important but also homing in on our strategy going forward is going to be really important to keep moving forward.

HealthyWomen: How do supporting organizations like the Society for Women’s Health Research and HealthyWomen play an important role in advancing these goals?

Liz: It’s critical. The Society for Women’s Health Research is doing lots of great advocacy work, but they are nonprofit so they are limited in how much they can do. And so a lot of times that we team up when they’re working on something and we can amplify it.

We’ve signed on to letters that they sent to Congress, for example, and we’ve written letters that they’ve signed on to. There’s a lot of very supportive partnership and collaboration that happens.

Garner: There’s just no one organization that can do this alone. And so we talk a lot about bringing together the entire ecosystem so everyone is working together.

HealthyWomen and SWHR provide women with information and safe spaces for women to tell their stories. And that’s what drives people. That’s what drives policymakers, investors and other stakeholders to take action when they hear those stories.

HealthyWomen: How can readers get involved?

Garner: We’re doing events around the country, so we definitely invite people to come to an event and see what’s happening and learn and meet like-minded people.

Liz: People can also sign up on our website to join our community — I send legislative updates and a lot of insider information most people don’t have with women’s health always being the focus.

HealthyWomen: Is there anything else you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about?

Garner: I have one thing that I think it’s always important to talk about, and that’s diversity. We are a very diverse organization. And it’s so important because, for all the issues that we’ve been talking about, they are always worse for women of color, for other underserved communities and so on. So, we’ve got to make sure that, as we go along, we’re including everyone in all that we do.