Andi and I spent our careers as women's health and fertility clinicians sitting across from women who were sick, dismissed, and sent home with nothing. Women who waited seven years for an endometriosis diagnosis. Women who described textbook symptoms and were told it was anxiety. Women who were handed antidepressants instead of answers.

This isn't bad luck. It's a systemic failure, and it has a paper trail.

For decades, women were excluded from clinical trials to "protect" potential pregnancies. The result? Dosing guidelines, treatment protocols, and diagnostic criteria built almost entirely on male bodies. We were treated as small men, or not treated at all.

The NIH has made progress. But conditions that affect hundreds of millions of women - endometriosis, PCOS, perimenopause and menopause, postpartum depression, autoimmune diseases (which affect women at nearly 3x the rate of men), Alzheimer's disease (where nearly two-thirds of patients are women), migraines, lupus, osteoporosis, and thyroid disease — remain chronically underfunded relative to how many of us they impact.

This is every woman's issue — at 22 and at 62, whether you have children or never want them, whether you're navigating a chronic diagnosis or simply tired of not being taken seriously. It's also a public health issue.

We are calling on Congress and the NIH to mandate that conditions primarily affecting women receive research funding proportional to their prevalence and impact.

Women are not a niche population. We are half the country. Fund us like it.

-Suzie and Andi
Co-founder, Binto

In partnership with
-Abby and Kristyn, Rescripted