First Lady Jill Biden toured the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center and Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Friday, Dec. 8, as part of the White House’s initiative on women’s health research.
She arrived at the Cedars-Sinai media center at 1:50 p.m. and was greeted by, and accompanied on the tour by, 36th District Congressman Ted Lieu and his spouse Betty Lieu; Thomas M. Priselac, president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; Dr. Shlomo Melmed, executive vice president of academic affairs and dean of the medical faculty at Cedars-Sinai; Dr. Noel Bairey Merz, director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center; and Maria Shriver, founder of the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement — and the former first lady of California.
“Research on women’s health has been underfunded for decades and many conditions that mostly and only affect women, or affect women differently, have received limited attention — like those debilitating migraines and undiagnosed heart attacks,” Dr. Biden said.
“Because of these gaps we understand far too little about these conditions, and how to help the millions of women who struggle with them,” ” Biden said, “And these gaps are even greater for communities that historically have been excluded from research, including women of color and women with disabilities.”
At the medical center’s Simulation Center, Biden and other participants talked to Cedars-Sinai researchers about their use of advanced imaging to study the differences between hearts and brains in men and women. Funding for the study, researchers said, comes from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
In the Van Eyk Laboratory at the medical center, Dr. Biden and other guests learned from researchers how the study of female genes, proteins, and vascular cells leads the way to understanding women’s heart diseases and the development of specific diagnostics and therapeutics.
The First Lady asked one of the researchers, Dr. Sarah Parker, associate professor at Cedars-Sinai, when was she due — and congratulated her on her pregnancy.
After the tour, the First Lady spoke in an auditorium about the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research launched by the President and her in November 2023.
She said, “When I talked to Joe about this issue a few months ago, he listened and then he took action. And that is what Joe does. He learns about the problem and then he gets to work tackling it. That’s why last month, we launched the White House initiative on women’s health research.”
Dr. Biden added that President Biden issued a presidential memorandum, “asking federal agencies to look at their programs and how they are thinking of women and their health. And he gave them a deadline on December 28. The White House will review the recommendations on how to make the policy changes necessary to advance women’s health research.”
I’m at Cedars-Sinai where @FLOTUS Jill Biden attends the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center. Story soon @ladailynews pic.twitter.com/JdYJM1GYRP
— Olga Grigoryants (@OlgaGrigory) December 8, 2023
Following the tour, California’s former First Lady Maria Shriver said, “For too long women have been underrepresented when it comes to health research and money spent on that research — and that changes now.”
Shriver added, “For decades we’ve been asking for equity when it comes to investing in women’s health research, but it has taken this president and this First Lady to address the issue, of how sick women are in this country, and how women can age most successfully into the future.”