After strong protests from scientists and experts, federal officials said Thursday they will restore funding from women's health programs, one of the largest and longest women's health studies ever.
The findings of WHI and its randomized controlled trials have changed medical practices and helped shape clinical guidelines to prevent hundreds of thousands of cases of cardiovascular and breast cancer.
“These studies have made an important contribution to our better understanding of women’s health,” said Emily G. Hilliard, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We are now working to fully restore funding for these basic research efforts,” she added. The National Institutes of Health “still be committed to advancing public health through strict gold standard research, and we are taking immediate steps to ensure the continuity of these studies.”
WHI began in the 1990s, when few women were included in clinical research, enrolling 160,000 participants nationwide. It continues to follow about 42,000 women, tracking data on cardiovascular disease and aging, as well as fragile vision loss and mental health.
The researchers hope to use these findings to learn more about how to maintain mobility and cognitive function as well as slow memory loss, detect cancer earlier and predict risks for other diseases.
HHS has informed the research team leaders that it will terminate the contract for the WHI Regional Center in September, although the Clinical Coordination Center at the Fred Hatch Cancer Center in Seattle will provide funding at least from January 2026 to the evening of January 2026.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democratic Washington, said the closure of the trial would be a “devastating loss of women's health research.”
Ms Murray said the program not only led to significant advances in women’s health, but “it paved the way for a generation of researchers focusing on women’s health – long overlooked and underfunded.”
WHI includes many randomized controlled trials and contributes to more than 2,000 research papers. However, the researchers found that the study of older women who bind estrogen and progesterone suddenly stopped hormone replacement therapy in 2002, which had a small but significantly increased risk.
Prior to this, it was widely believed that hormone replacement therapy could protect women from cardiovascular disease. But the trial found that even though the hormone combination reduced colorectal cancer and hip fractures, it still put women at a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes and blood clots.
One of the long-time principal researchers of the study, Dr. Joann Manson, a medical professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham Young and Women's Hospital, said the announcement of the cuts was “heartbreaking.”
She said the initial decision to cut funds was confusing, with the country's health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“There is no better example of the scientific impact of research on chronic disease prevention than WHI,” Dr. Manson said.
According to one study, researchers found that lessons learned from hormone research saved huge savings in health care costs — about $35 billion between 2003 and 2012, according to a study, as the number of cancer and cardiovascular disease cases has been avoided. For every dollar spent by WHI, save $140.
A randomized trial conducted by WHI studied the effects of low-fat diets containing fruits and vegetables. Although the researchers initially found a decrease in ovarian cancer only, long-term follow-up showed that diet also reduced breast cancer deaths.
Another study of calcium and vitamin D found that supplements provide moderate benefits for preserving bone quality and preventing hip fractures in older women, but do not prevent other fractures or colorectal cancer.
These findings affect medical guidelines and are not currently advised to take supplements regularly in all women.
Participants in the initiative are now 78 to 108 years old, and some scientists acknowledge that arguments can be made to end the trial. However, it is often planned carefully to end such a large-scale research.
“We still need to learn a lot,” said Garnet Anderson, senior vice president of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Fred Hatch Cancer Center and chief investigator of the program.
“No one has studied 13,000 women over the age of 90: What are their health needs? How to live such a long and long healthy life?” she said. “We would love to know the secret of successful healthy aging.”
One reason for the start of this study in the 1990s was the lack of information and research on women's health, and there was little evidence that could be based on clinical recommendations.
“Women are half the population, but they have not been included in the study. They are mainly men and the results are inferred as women,” Dr. Neuhouser said.
