Women's Health PAC gains momentum in Bay Area
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Joanna Strober, founder of the Bay Area-based Midi Health, is a member of the Women's Health PAC's founder's circle. Photo: Steven Ferdman via Getty Images
As abortion and reproductive rights take center stage ahead of the election, many Bay Area women are turning to a new women's health PAC working to highlight broader systemic issues.
Why it matters: Women's health remains significantly understudied, even as OB-GYN deserts continue to grow in the U.S.
Follow the money: The National Institutes of Health allocates about 11% of its budget per year to women-centered research, a 2024 McKinsey report found.
- Even in the Bay Area-centered tech sector, companies focused on innovation in women's health attract just 2% of venture capital funding for health care, per a 2024 Deloitte analysis.
State of play: Co-founded by Candace McDonald, Jodi Neuhauser and Liz Powell, the national Women's Health PAC launched this year in a bid to make women's health a mainstay in the political conversation beyond simply abortion.
- The bipartisan PAC is focused on bolstering innovation to address disparities, health care deserts, and barriers to maternal health and menopause care.
Between the lines: Many medical conditions that disproportionately impact women — such as Alzheimer's and chronic pain — are underdiagnosed because clinical trials have historically focused on men.
- A July study by UC Davis researchers found that abdominal aortic aneurysms develop faster in women but remain severely underdiagnosed due to gaps in data.
- Menopause symptoms are similarly understudied, even though they affect roughly 5 million women in California alone. A 2023 qualitative study found that barriers to seeking help include women's lack of knowledge, misattribution to another cause, and stigma.
Yes, but: More people are tuning in to the issue, especially in the Bay Area, which has seen its women's health tech sector grow substantially in the last few years amid broader challenges in the industry.
Zoom in: When the Women's Health PAC launched, people in San Francisco were among the first in the country to express interest in joining, McDonald told Axios.
- Joanna Strober, who founded the Bay Area-based virtual care clinic Midi Health to serve older women experiencing menopause, was one of those people. She told Axios she loved the idea of a bipartisan effort.
- "We need holistic women's health care ... and there are a lot of areas that we can all come together and agree require additional resources," Strober added.
- The PAC held an event in San Francisco last month featuring Strober in a lineup of speakers. It also hosted a dinner in Marin on Wednesday on the topic of sexual wellness after 40.
What they're saying: Part of the PAC's goal is to shift the conversation so people understand women's health as not just reproductive health but a wide range of conditions that differently impact women throughout their lifespans.
- "On some level, every woman has some story ... [of] some struggle with the health care system, but many have not yet connected the dots" that there are underlying systemic problems, McDonald told Axios.
- "We chose the bipartisan pathway because we want to be inclusive of all," she noted. "There's such a divisiveness in going one route over the other. If we really want to change what the systems are, it requires both, and that's a long-term play."
What's next: They expect to hit their fundraising goal of $250,000 by the election and fund 10-15 congressional candidates this cycle, whom they select after examining the candidates' answers to a questionnaire they sent to campaigns in toss-up races.
- The questions touch on OB-GYN deserts, lack of diversity in clinical trials, menopause care, and Black maternal mortalities, among others.