1. United States
2. Ariz.
3. Letter

Dear Senator Gallego, I am writing to express my disappointment as a woman in your role in developing a governmental health agency for men at the exclusion of women. Sadly, women have been excluded from much of clinical research for decades. Even today, women’s health remains drastically under-researched, underfunded, misdiagnosed, and undertreated. Women wait longer for diagnoses. Their pain is more likely to be dismissed. They’re more likely to be misdiagnosed during a heart attack. And conditions that overwhelmingly affect women remain nowhere near the research priority they should be. This is not that I am opposed to men’s health initiatives. It’s a question of why we’re still building a healthcare system that doesn’t fully understand half the population. Women deserve better healthcare. Men deserve better healthcare. Everyone deserves healthcare based on evidence—not a medical system built around the male body as the default. And if we really care about the health of our families, maybe it’s time we stop treating women’s health as an afterthought.