Women's Health Activists Note Progress But Still See Problems

SIDEBAR : Examples of Women's Health Research Goals

Advocates and scientists are optimistic as they update and expand their agenda to include varied research priorities.

Today's newspapers are replete with reports detailing advances in women's health: New breast cancer-causing genes are reported with increasing regularity, as are discoveries of connections between hormones or genetics and disease. In the midst of this progress, advocates for research on women's health-scientists, clinicians, physicians, patients, administrators, and federal officials-have started to reassess where the field is headed. On one hand, they view the increased number of women participating in clinical trials and the steady growth in funding for high-profile diseases such as breast cancer as accomplishments. But on the other, they agree that their efforts have only begun to touch on what there is to learn.

Over the last 10 years, investigators have accumulated much knowledge. But with the new understandings, new questions have...