Audrey Mann Cronin takes over THCB today and has a THCB Gang special called “The Odyssey of Women’s Health: Journeying into the Midterms – Obstacles, Opportunities and What We Can Expect”
The panel is Liz Powell, an attorney and Founder of both G2G Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates, and former Capitol Hill staffer; Dr. Elizabeth Garner, CEO of Sena Therapeutics, former CSO for Ferring, and past President of the American Medical Women’s Association; and, Dr. Mitzi Krockover who founded both Women Centered and Femtech AZ, and is an investor serving as Managing Director of Golden Seeds
What’s going to be the impact of politics, policy and the mid-terms on Women’s Health? Hear from these advocates, as they reference this summer’s blockbuster!
The transcript (made by Youtube and Claude so blame AI for any mistakes!)
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Hello to everyone, and welcome to a special episode of Matthew Holt’s THCB Gang. My name is Audrey Cronin. I’m a communications advisor in healthcare and technology and a passionate women’s health advocate. I’m so pleased to be joined today by a powerhouse of women healthcare leaders. But before we start, a big thank you to Matthew Holt, who, in a rare tender moment, offered to have me be the Rosie O’Donnell to his Jimmy Kimmel.
Today’s panel is made up of thought leaders in women’s healthcare policy, investment, and life sciences and medicine. What we all have in common is that we are all part of Women’s Health Advocates, the nation’s only bipartisan lobbying organization that advocates at the federal and state level to advance women’s health, head to toe.
The 2026 midterm elections are upon us. We’re all reading about it — it’s here. The current split of the Congress is 218 Republicans, including one independent, and 212 Democrats. State by state, who sits in Congress matters, and matters profoundly to women’s health. This is why we’re here. By now, most understand that women make up 51% of the United States’ population. Yet women’s health remains underfunded, under-researched, and overlooked.
Like Odysseus in the Odyssey — yes, I’m going there — we are on a journey, this one to overcome obstacles and fragmented factions with advocacy and education that is proven to have the power to influence policy change, shape women’s health, and save lives. Today we’ll talk about these obstacles, opportunities, and what we can expect with the results of the midterm elections and women’s health going forward.
Our panel today includes Liz Powell, Dr. Elizabeth Garner, and Dr. Mitzi Krockover. I would love for you to introduce yourselves. Liz, would you like to go first?
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Sure, happy to. Thanks so much. Liz Powell. I’m the founder and head of both GDG Consulting, a lobbying firm in Washington, and Women’s Health Advocates, which we just launched in February of 2025. And I’m a former Capitol Hill staffer. Beth, want me to go next?
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Garner, CEO, Sen Therapeutics
Sure, yes. Hi, Beth Garner. I’m a women’s health physician by training — an OB/GYN and a gynecologic oncologist. I jumped into industry about 20 years ago to help women by developing therapies for women, and I’ve been in women’s health all that time. I’m now CEO of Sen Therapeutics. We’re developing therapies for PCOS.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Great. Mitzi, thank you.
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
Great to go on this odyssey with all you lovely women. I’m really excited about that. I am Mitzi Krockover. I’m an internist by training and previous practice. I was the founding medical director of the Iris Cantor UCLA Women’s Health Center, and then went on to Humana as vice president of women’s health, and now I’m very immersed in the innovation space, because we need more solutions for women’s health. I am currently the director of women’s health innovation at the ASU College of Health Solutions, and co-founder of FemTech Arizona, creating a hub for women’s health innovation here in the state of Arizona. I literally want to be invested in women’s health, so I am a managing director at Golden Seeds, an angel investment organization, and CEO of Women Centered, which is a media and women’s health strategy company.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Wow, wonderful to have you all. So, Liz, I’d love to start with you. Can you tell us more about why you started Women’s Health Advocates, and secondarily, as a lobbyist in Washington, DC, can you share the women’s health policy changes that are being legislated today and are the most high-stakes, as well as the role policy plays in innovation? So, two big questions.
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Yeah, absolutely. Most people don’t realize that women and people of color were not required to be included in clinical trials until 1993. So there have been huge gaps in the data that informs medical decision-making to this day. When a woman presents in the ER with a heart condition, she’s twice as likely to die afterward, because we just don’t have the data. A lot of doctors aren’t even trained on appropriate data on women, and sex differences go down to the cellular level.
As a lobbyist and somebody who works in Washington, what I started to see, instead of a gap here or there, was consistent gaps that needed to be addressed. Whether it’s inclusion in clinical trials; research funding for women’s health, which is defined as those conditions that solely, disproportionately, or differently impact the health of women, head to toe, over the lifespan — so, more research dollars and investment there; or the regulatory process, making sure that new women’s health innovations are able to get through FDA to reimbursement. If you’re not reimbursed or don’t have coverage, then the innovation never reaches patients. And finally, there’s access. You can have the greatest innovation in the world, but if you’re not reaching rural America, for example, then we’re not really being effective in advancing health for women.
Having a greater understanding of all those gaps is what gave me the idea to start Women’s Health Advocates. I’d been teaming up with Mitzi and Beth for years, addressing different gaps in women’s health, and we decided we needed all of women’s health, head to toe, to be addressed through a lobbying organization. We are the only lobbying organization that is educating and advocating to close those gaps in women’s health, head to toe, over the lifespan.
What’s been amazing is that we organized the first-ever Women’s Health Capitol Hill Day — you can see behind me all the smiling faces. We’ve brought people to Washington several times now to do these Hill Days. We’ve done online events. We’ve done events across the country, 25 at this point, coast to coast and in between. What we were finding is that there’s huge energy and interest in taking action and better understanding these gaps and then doing something about it. And how do we do something about it? We’ve got to advocate. We’ve got to use our voices. And we have to get out and vote.
This year’s midterm elections are going to result in at least a 16% changeover in Congress. It’ll be more than that, because there are about 21 toss-up seats. So there’s going to be big change, and if we can make women’s health a priority for candidates and those who are in office, then we can really shift the ground. We can really transform research, the FDA approval process, reimbursement, and address all these specific health conditions. So I’m very excited about what I’m seeing so far across the country: all 50 states, over 5,500 advocates. We are really raising our voices and making a difference.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Amazing. All right, Beth. Now I’d love you to tell us how you define women’s health, and why this definition is so important given today’s climate and the ongoing challenges for women and the conditions we face, as Liz talked about, at every stage of life.
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Garner, CEO, Sen Therapeutics
Yeah, thanks so much. As Liz said, definitions are always important, wherever you are, and certainly when we’re talking about policy and speaking to members of Congress who are making really serious decisions about our health. It’s critical for us as women’s health advocates to ensure policymakers understand what women’s health actually is. That’s really important for us, and it’s even more important in the current climate, as we have so much work to do to ensure that women’s health is top of mind.
We now think about women’s health broadly — Liz basically said that — as way more than reproductive health, or, as some of us call it, “boobs and tubes.” We’re not boobs and tubes. We are way more than that. Women’s health really encompasses the full arc of a woman’s life, and the physical, the mental, the emotional dimensions of our lives, from birth through death. And along that journey, women deal with a number of conditions that we now think about in three buckets, and these are the definitions that we talk about. There are conditions that affect only women, such as endometriosis, as an example. There are conditions that disproportionately affect women, such as Alzheimer’s. And then there are conditions that differentially — differently — affect women, such as heart disease.
As you heard from Liz, I think we do have a better understanding of women’s health now, because we think about these conditions in these three buckets. But unfortunately, I would say we’re just really far away from actually addressing women’s needs, no matter what color or ethnicity they are, where they live, how much income they have, and so on. The disparities across the US and around the world are enormous. So I think we’re doing a great job in terms of definitions and getting policy people to really understand, and this is really where, as Liz has said already, advocacy comes in.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Great. Thank you for that. Mitzi, do you want to talk about policy impact and what solutions get to market for women, and what can be done to encourage the creation of legislation that gets evidence-based — importantly, evidence-based — products to market faster?
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
Sure. I just want to piggyback on some of the things Liz talked about. When you look at the continuum of innovation, or solutions, it’s really a pipeline, if you will. It starts with good research, and then that good research informs evidence-based solutions. Those solutions need clinical trials in order to prove their efficacy or their outcomes, and then they go through a regulatory process if it’s a device, a diagnostic, or a therapeutic. Then it has to be adopted into the health system, and mostly it’s only going to be if somebody’s paying for it, covering it, or reimbursing for it. And then it has to be adopted into clinical practice, and that’s by training and awareness by the physicians themselves. In every area I just talked about, there is a policy implication.
If we look at women’s health research, as Liz talked about, we have a dearth of information, because we didn’t really start including women and other underrepresented groups until 1993. So we’re behind the ball. Now, two years ago, unfortunately, women’s health got conflated with DEI. So now we have researchers whose research is being denied funding because they are studying women, or they’re studying a woman’s body parts, and they’ve had to be very creative in the way they’ve talked about it. It’s really made an impact on the research that’s becoming available in women’s health. So we need to focus on that.
The second area is that these innovators need support for their innovations and clinical trials. There are things like grants that have been available to what they call small businesses, and again, because of the conflation of DEI with women’s health, some of those have been taken away. So we need to be very cognizant of that issue.
And then, finally — not finally, but — reimbursement. We know that certain procedures that are similar between men and women, the ones done on women actually get reimbursed in some cases less. So if you’re a health system or provider, what are you going to do? You’re not going to do the women’s procedure, you’re going to do the men’s procedure. So we need to focus on that, as well as coverage decisions for insurance. Where that really makes an impact is that Medicare and Medicaid, the government-backed insurance, really dictate what commercial insurance will cover. When they make decisions, and that’s a policy decision, commercial follows.
Finally, we can also have an impact on medical education dollars, as to what is taught in medical schools and in training, and so that’s also a policy decision. If we make a decision to make physicians aware of these new innovations, as well as women’s health in general, then we’ll be better served. As you can see, all along the pipeline is where policy really makes a difference, and where we have opportunities to really benefit everyone.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Wow. I love how you strung that all together, and where policy intersects every time. It’s so exciting to be part of this, and we’ve got a lot of work to do. So thank you for taking us all the way through that.
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
Taking you on that journey, right?
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Yeah, we’re on a journey. Absolutely. So, Beth, back to you. Can you tell us about your experience as an entrepreneur, how you see private-sector funding as it relates to policy, and what the landscape looks like for women’s health?
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Garner, CEO, Sen Therapeutics
Yeah, thanks for that. As the CEO of Sen Therapeutics, my experience as an entrepreneur has really been grounded in identifying an important unmet need and then building the company, the team, and the partnerships necessary to address it. Of course, entrepreneurship requires vision, but it always requires discipline as well, resilience, and a willingness to keep learning and adapting. Ultimately it’s about translating a compelling scientific or clinical opportunity into something that can actually improve patients’ lives, which is what we’re all after here.
I view private-sector funding as an essential partner to public policy. Policy, as you’ve heard, can help define priorities, can certainly remove barriers here and there, can encourage innovation, and ensure, of course, that patients’ needs and public health remain central. Private capital provides the resources and the expertise to turn promising research into therapies, companies, and solutions that can then reach patients. So the two are most effective when they work together — when policy creates the right environment for innovation and private investment helps move that innovation forward.
I would say the landscape is changing. There is growing recognition of the significant unmet needs in women’s health, and I’m hearing that every single day. As a person who’s financing — getting money for — women’s health, it’s changed for sure over the years, which is exciting. We’re seeing increased interest from entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, and policymakers. But I think we need to make sure we sustain that momentum, with better data — you’ve just heard about data already — more inclusive clinical research, and funding models that support companies through that long, very complex process of developing a therapy. So for me, the opportunity is not simply to build a successful company. It’s to help advance a healthcare system that takes women’s health seriously, invests in the science, and gets us better outcomes for women across their lives.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Great. Well, thank you for all that you’re doing. That’s exciting and so important. So let’s get back to Liz, on specific critical issues related to endometriosis and breast cancer legislation, because we have research funding and the EARLY Act. I’d love to have you talk more about what we might expect from outcomes in those spaces.
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Yeah. I would love to start with a thank-you to our advocates. We did a big push for the EARLY Act, which funds and reauthorizes screening programs for women, and we got that to pass the House. Now we’re waiting to see if it can pass the Senate. They’re not in session this week, and they have very little time left before they’re out completely for the elections, so it’s unlikely that things will move before the elections. At the end of the year, when they come back after November 3rd, that is when they’ll have to figure out a lot of these bills. So we have been working to continue to educate and advocate for the EARLY Act.
We’ve been working on endometriosis, as you mentioned. We’ve done a couple of letters to the Department of Labor for workplace protections. We just did a letter with Congresswoman Williams to HHS, Health and Human Services, around reimbursement gaps for endometriosis. It’s the same code and same reimbursement rate for ablation, which takes 30 minutes, versus excision, which can take four, six, even eight hours — which is insane, that we’re disincentivizing the gold-standard care. And many other issues we’re working on. We were also excited to see the IMPROVE Act pass the same night in the House, which addresses maternal mortality and maternal health issues.
So there’s lots of legislation that we see as non-controversial. It’s just about having the time to get it onto the schedule, and we could see it getting through at the end of the year. We will certainly be advocating, and sometimes they’ll just put it all together on an omnibus. They have to get the 12 appropriations bills done, so it’ll likely be a big bill that will include all of it.
The other factor is how the elections swing things. Do we have a sudden change in control? Many are thinking that Hakeem Jeffries will become the new Speaker in the House, and if that’s the case, they may punt it to next year, when the Democrats have more power to do it. Either way, in the House the chamber is so razor-thin that it doesn’t really matter — you’ll need both sides to get a lot of things through. So it’s not going to be a huge shift. If it does shift power, it’ll just be a little bit of a shift, but that does give them some power to do things, and gives them control of the gavel of the committees, and so they’ll do, I’m sure, lots of investigations. There’ll be a big dynamic change in the committees.
For the Senate, it’s still up in the air. It’ll be tight for Democrats to take control of the Senate, but either way we expect the chamber’s margin to be closer between the two. All that impacts what legislation can be worked on. So are we going to see a huge $200 billion increase for women’s health research? Unlikely. But could we see other changes? Could we fix the reimbursement challenges Mitzi is talking about, the gaps in care, in access, in rural health? There are a lot of good issues we could be working on in women’s health that are very bipartisan, that no matter who controls, we will certainly be working to make a priority.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
I have to say, Liz, every time I hear from you, I always feel better about things. So thank you.
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Optimism.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
You’re a force, and I appreciate you so much. You talked a little bit about maternal health. Mitzi, can you talk more about our country’s maternal health policies and where we currently stand?
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
Yes. It makes me sad — not maternal health, but our outcomes. We are at least 24th, if not worse, when we look at all of the other developed and non-developed countries when it comes to our maternal health outcomes. And Black women have a three times greater risk of dying than Caucasian women. We need to do better, obviously, and that also provides us opportunity. It’s not just a care problem, it’s a prevention, screening, and access problem.
We have, I believe, one out of three counties in the United States that are OB deserts, which means there are no obstetrical services at all. We see a number of hospitals closing their labor and delivery units because of low reimbursement and resources, and obviously our rural health residents suffer the most, but in every state, everywhere, we really have a dearth of access.
Here’s the good part: innovation can help, right? Through telehealth, through remote monitoring, we can identify things faster so we can get more treatment to the women who need it. AI-enhanced information, both for physicians and for women. And again, in all of those areas, policy really makes a difference. Forty percent of births in this country are covered by Medicaid, which is government-sponsored insurance. So obviously when Medicaid gets cut, those women are impacted, but when it gets expanded, they’re also impacted in a positive way.
There was also something called Medicaid expansion that was provided to the states a few years ago, and that means there’s coverage for that fourth trimester, that year after birth, where you can identify or treat issues that came up during pregnancy, like preeclampsia and hypertension, diabetes, mental health issues. So important. And we’re seeing that. Those states that adopted that expansion actually had better outcomes. So those are positives.
Then, to the extent that we can support the innovation, that again creates opportunities for access for women, with remote monitoring, telehealth, diagnostics, point-of-care — what we call where women can actually do a diagnostic test themselves. All of those have an impact. And the final thing we talked about earlier was reimbursement. There’s a new policy where it used to be that you’d get kind of one-size-fits-all reimbursement as a provider for an obstetrical case, and now they’ve unbundled it, so that if you have a higher-risk or higher-need patient, you actually get paid for that. That should hopefully help a bit on that reimbursement and coverage issue.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Great. That’s great. So, Beth, Mitzi touched on Medicaid and Medicare. Do you want to talk more about the impact of CMS and why it’s so important to health insurance?
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Garner, CEO, Sen Therapeutics
Oh, certainly. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plays a truly foundational role in the US healthcare system, as I think all of us know. Its decisions affect how millions and millions of people access and pay for care. As it relates to health insurance, it helps define the rules of coverage and reimbursement, as you’ve heard from Mitzi, and its policies of course influence which services and therapies are covered, how providers and insurers are paid, what quality and value standards must be met, and how affordability and access are addressed.
It’s also important to know that CMS decisions — and I think Mitzi, you already said this, but I’ll say it again because it’s really important — generally have a broader effect on the whole healthcare market by establishing precedent and shaping expectations, meaning commercial insurance pretty much generally follows CMS decisions.
Some important areas to be aware of: Medicaid covers about 42% of all births, which is amazing, and just considering what we just heard about birth and women and their babies, it’s critical that we address these horrific disparities between women of color and Caucasian women. Better coverage is clearly, badly needed. You also heard from Mitzi — I’ll say it again — about differences in reimbursement rates for surgical procedures for male and female patients. This is absolutely not okay and we must address this disparity, and thankfully we have Jocelyn Fitzgerald, who’s an amazing physician and a member of Women’s Health Advocates, working very, very hard on this. So that’s really exciting.
For companies like mine that are developing new therapies, CMS is also a critical stakeholder. There’s FDA, of course — we have to get our products approved, and that tells us that a therapy is safe and effective for its intended use. But coverage and reimbursement is what ultimately determines whether a patient can realistically access our products. So that’s really, really important, and it means innovators need to think early about their evidence. What are they going to bring to CMS regarding clinical efficacy and safety, real-world outcomes, the health economics, the patient impact, the value to the healthcare system? Many companies, especially startups, really don’t understand that, so I continue to talk about thinking about that very early in development.
CMS also has an important role in advancing health equity — or at least it should. Its policies can help address disparities in access, improve quality across populations, and ensure that innovation reaches the patients who need it most, not only those with the greatest ability to pay. So from my perspective as an entrepreneur, CMS is not simply a regulator or payer. It’s one of the key institutions shaping the healthcare ecosystem, and understanding its role is really essential to developing solutions for women that are not only scientifically meaningful but also accessible, affordable, and sustainable within the healthcare system.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Wow, we’re all fired up.
[laughter]
Go ahead, Mitzi.
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
That’s okay. I just want to underline something, because Beth can actually speak to this much better than I can. A place where I think, again, it’s a great example of policy working is something called breakthrough designation. The government has decided that there’s something that really needs solving that hasn’t been solved before — maybe it’s osteoporosis, for example — so they give basically an expedited approval process. Not less rigorous, just a little bit more expedited. And then if it meets all the criteria, it can be reimbursed by CMS, or there’s a code given to it. That’s a great example of how the government and innovation work together to get solutions to individuals more quickly. We have so many gaps in women’s health, and I’m hoping to see a lot more breakthrough designations in the future. Beth, I don’t know if you want to comment on that.
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Garner, CEO, Sen Therapeutics
No, it’s a great point. Yeah. The RAPID program is what’s pending right now. There’s an open rule to comment on, to close that gap.
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Exactly. So, two additional points I just wanted to add — Beth, you got me fired up. One is menopause and perimenopause. When women go in to see their doctors, there is a copay, and many of us are working to eliminate that copay, because it is essential. There are so many things happening, and it’s not just hot flashes and brain fog. You are suddenly at much higher risk for heart disease, autoimmune conditions, and many others. We need to educate and stop the current practice of many women seeing eight or ten different doctors before they finally get HRT, or whatever care they need. So we need to have no copay for that, and we need to have better resources.
The other thing I wanted to point out, just to make a fine point on this, because I think people don’t realize: the reimbursement rate for equivalent surgical procedures is anywhere from 30 to 150% higher if it is a male patient. Let that sit. That is unacceptable, and that is hurting patients — not just the one getting the surgery, but future patients. Because if you can’t afford to do these surgeries, whether you’re the doctor or the medical facility, you’re going to do fewer and fewer of these surgeries, and eventually you’re just going to shut down that wing completely. That’s going to hurt all women. So I just wanted to make a finer point on that one.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Well, I cannot believe we’re here and we hadn’t talked about menopause yet. So thank you for that.
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
And osteoporosis.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Yeah. So important. And, Liz, this is, I think, a final question, although I’ll open up at the end if there’s anything you want to add. Back to the midterms: there are so many issues we have to tackle, so many things we just talked about. What do you expect to happen, what are some races we should be watching and how do they impact the industry and patients, and what interesting candidates do you think we should be looking at?
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Well, I certainly hope more and more candidates are talking about women’s health issues and seeing that the broad definition of women’s health really is impacting their constituents. We’re working to help shape that. We’re doing voter education efforts. We’ve been doing this whole amazing initiative that Mitzi took the lead on, called My Vote, Our Health — a five-part series. We’ve got another one coming up on September 24th and then the final one in October, so tune in for that.
We are also tracking the elections and evaluating those top races, and I think there are some really interesting candidates and elections. In Arizona, we have a physician running. In Iowa, you’ve got not just two House seats but the Senate seat, all of those toss-ups. Ohio suddenly now has two toss-ups, plus the Senate race is a toss-up. Pennsylvania has three toss-ups. Michigan is really interesting: two on the House side that are toss-ups, and then the Senate race is proving different than what people thought, because Abdul El-Sayed, who’s the far-left candidate but also a physician, won the Democratic nomination, and Mike Rogers is an incumbent — a former congressman, pretty moderate, actually. When I worked on Capitol Hill, he was in office and we worked together on a lot of things, so that’ll be an interesting race that could really go either way.
So there are a lot of races to watch, a lot of states to watch. No matter what, though, we are making sure people understand that women’s health is bipartisan. Women’s health impacts all of us. It impacts our economy. We are hoping to drive people to vote for women’s health: talk to candidates about women’s health, what they think about women’s health, and then make sure that you vote for women’s health.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Great way to end it. Is there anything we didn’t talk about, panelists, that you’d like to add? I always like to open it up.
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Garner, CEO, Sen Therapeutics
I would like to just underline a little of what Liz was saying. I think we’ve had this thread before, but I want to say it explicitly: women’s health is not a nice-to-have. Sure, we all want better health for everybody, but it’s really an economic imperative. It impacts the workforce, it impacts our economy, it impacts our healthcare and healthcare costs. And we have the data, if anybody needs that to believe it. McKinsey did a report, now very well known, that if we were to close the gap in women’s health, we would get a $1 trillion return on investment annually by 2040 globally. In the United States, that translates to $295 billion. I don’t know about you, but I could do a lot with that kind of money. If we had $295 billion, we could do so much. But it’s also imperative for us as a country. It increases our productivity, it increases our competitiveness. Women are the majority of caregivers, who do it for free. If we don’t have women, who’s going to care? As well as reduce healthcare costs. So when we talk about this, it’s really something that doesn’t just benefit women, it benefits everyone.
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
And you can get rich off it. A hundred billion dollars in ROI from women’s health investments over the past 25 years — trillions of dollars globally.
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Garner, CEO, Sen Therapeutics
Oh, okay — that’s the Oriana report?
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
Well, okay, but the Aoa Dx study is what I’m quoting. They found that, by just studying all the exits and making sure they’re classified correctly, a hundred billion dollars in ROI has already been earned. People are wealthy today because of their investments in women’s health, half of that in just the past five years, and it includes 27-plus unicorns. So if you don’t care about any of that, you can make money. Just think about it that way.
[laughter]
Do well and do good.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
There you go. I want to say that this is so interesting, and the timing is so important, because we’re heading into the midterms, so there’s so much for us to be advocating for. We will be having Liz on the main stage at HLTH after the midterms, and I know you talked about the analysis you’re going to be doing, so stay tuned for that as well. We may come back and do another webinar after.
Dr. Mitzi Krockover, Director of Women’s Health Innovation, ASU College of Health Solutions
Can you share the title? I love the title.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
The title of this webinar, or —
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
No, my talk: “What the Elections Just Decided for Women’s Health.”
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Right, so that’ll be a packed house, I’m sure. And then I just wanted to say — unless, Liz, you want to talk about what people should do if they want to take action, or do you want me to take that one?
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Yeah, go ahead.
Audrey Cronin, Communications Advisor, Healthcare and Technology
Okay. If you want to take action, please visit the Women’s Health Advocates website, where you can join our community, write to Congress, join our steering committee, and donate.
[laughter]
Thank you. This was amazing. I’m so grateful that you joined me today, and for all that you’re doing, and I look forward to hearing more. So thank you so much again.
Liz Powell, Founder, GDG Consulting and Women’s Health Advocates
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
