Jill Biden has taken a new position leading an initiative at a California-based think tank focused on improving women’s health after her four years in the White House.
“From endometriosis to healthy aging, the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research made important investments in research and development, while making clear it will take collaboration across industries to bring these innovations to scale,” Biden said, per an April 29 Milken Institute press release. “I am honored to join the Milken Institute as we unite leaders around a shared mission: for women everywhere to benefit from the lifesaving, world-changing research we know is possible.”
The Milken Institute describes itself as a nonpartisan economic think tank based out of Santa Monica that focuses on “financial, physical, mental, and environmental health” to “bring together the best ideas and resourcing to develop blueprints for tackling some of our most critical global issues.”
Biden will chair the newly established Women’s Health Network at the think tank.
Biden, a teacher with a doctorate in education, prioritized several key initiatives as first lady, including the Biden Cancer Moonshot to eradicate cancer, the Joining Forces program to support military families and caregivers, and the launch of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, Fox News noted.
Biden took part in the Milken Institute’s 28th annual Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Other notable guests who addressed the gathering included Trump administration Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Trump administration Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.
Biden’s role as chair of the Milken Institute’s new initiative will concentrate on “galvanizing participation, collaboration, and shared action in the Women’s Health Network to improve women’s health and wellbeing,” per the think tank’s press release.
In 2023, then-President Joe Biden signed a presidential memorandum that initiated the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. Jill Biden led this initiative, which aimed to increase funding for and improve research on women’s health.
The Biden White House claimed at the time that “TOO MANY medical studies have focused on men and left women out” and that too many of “the medicine dosages, treatments, medical school text books, are based on men and their bodies – and that information doesn’t always apply to women.”
Jill Biden told the Milken conference Monday that her husband was eager to “infuse” the “federal government with money” when launching the 2023 women’s initiative.
“So one of the things we did was we got to work right away,” Jill Biden said during the Milken Institute conference Monday. “Joe said, ‘You know, let’s infuse – really, the federal government with money.’ In one year, we put in $1 billion to advance women’s research.”
“And we worked a lot through the (National Institutes of Health) and the way that they did research, and we made sure that they disaggregated the data and that they separated the research on women and men differently, and we worked with (the Department of Defense) DOD – they put a lot of money into women’s research – and then we put a lot of money in to de-risk the investment,” Jill Biden continued.
“So there were a lot of things that, really, private equity wasn’t willing to take on because it was too risky, and we thought, let’s push this forward, and let’s try to find answers more quickly,” she added.
Jill Biden served as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College from 2009 until December 2024, when she announced that she had completed her final semester as her husband prepared for his exit from the Oval Office, Fox reported.
Her new role comes as political books summarizing the Biden administration hit shelves nationwide, with several reporting that concerns over the president’s mental acuity and age have gripped the administration throughout its four years.
