Dr. Teresa K. Woodruff believes that personalized medicine should start with the health of women, as she feels that when women’s health is prioritized, it will enable personal well-being, ensure generational health, and promote fundamental fairness. Woodruff commends the Biden White House for announcing the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, which she believes will address a longstanding issue in healthcare: the lack of inclusion of sex as a biological variable in published papers.

Woodruff published work years ago that showed that sex was not included in the majority of published papers. This means that the entire pipeline of work from bench discovery through therapeutic intervention is skewed towards male health. The Biden White House initiative will address this issue by promoting individual health in different aspects such as heart health, immune health, and the microbiome.

The focus on women’s health will also lead to better generational health for those born after this paradigm-shifting initiative. Maternal health is only ensured by a focus on women, and the White House initiative will also address maternal mortality rates and provide better healthcare services for women before, during, and after pregnancy.

Finally, Woodruff believes that prioritizing women’s health will bring about fundamental fairness and address issues related to gender inequality in healthcare. She argues that when everyone benefits from better healthcare services for women, it leads to improved overall well-being for individuals and groups alike.