Trump Signs Women's Health Order Pushed by Melania Trump, Creating an NIH Division and a White House Task Force

Updated 19:23 UTC

President Donald Trump signed the women's health executive order in the White House Rose Garden on Monday, October 19, 2026, with First Lady Melania Trump beside him. The two signed the order together, passing it between them and exchanging pens, and the president held it up to show both signatures.

"Beginning today, we will change the reality of women's health," the first lady said at the ceremony. She said the order establishes a new standard for women's health in America. President Trump praised her leadership and said the order will promote new research into understudied diseases that affect women.

The order creates a Women's Health Division at the National Institutes of Health and a White House Women's Health Task Force. The task force is led by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who recently announced she is free of breast cancer, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Its first meeting was set for Monday afternoon in the Roosevelt Room. The report below was published before the signing.

WASHINGTON. President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Monday that creates a Women's Health Division at the National Institutes of Health and a White House Women's Health Task Force, after First Lady Melania Trump pushed the administration to close a long gap between women's health research and the rest of American medicine, according to a White House document obtained by USA Today.

The signing is scheduled for 11 a.m. EDT in the Rose Garden, with the president and the first lady both taking part, according to the White House daily schedule. Melania Trump is set to lead the event and speak about women's health research, the use of artificial intelligence to speed up discoveries, and care that is accessible and affordable, her senior advisor Marc Beckman said.

How the plan came together

The first lady set up the push herself. She organized working sessions in the East Wing with the doctors she had consulted, East Wing policy makers, the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and she met officials from the Department of Health and Human Services to understand where care falls short.

"I acted quickly and organized working sessions between the doctors who I originally consulted, East Wing policy makers, the President, Secretary Kennedy, and other key stakeholders to shape this Executive Order, establish the task force, and create a new department within the NIH, dedicated to women's health exclusively," she said in a statement provided to USA Today.

"It was abundantly clear that women's healthcare needs to be modernized, the research gap closed, and further, the need to accelerate the discovery of treatments and cures was glaring," she said.

What the order creates

The new division will not replace the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health, which has worked on women's health since 1990. Its mandate runs wider. It will coordinate agencies to speed up scientific discoveries and improve health care for girls and women, USA Today reported.

The task force will be led by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Secretary Kennedy. Wiles has spoken openly in recent months about her own breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The order names midlife conditions such as osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease and stroke. It also covers maternal health, mental health and endometriosis, according to the briefing document USA Today obtained. The White House has not shared how much money is set aside for research or treatment. The NIH spends about $5 billion a year on women's health, about 10 percent of its budget, a share that has stayed steady across administrations, according to figures from the NIH cited by USA Today.

A wider turn in Washington

The signing lands in the middle of a broader Washington focus on menopause and midlife care. In November 2025, Kennedy announced that the Food and Drug Administration was removing the black box warning from some hormone replacement therapy after more than 20 years, making the treatments easier to get. The Senate Special Committee on Aging has held its first hearing on menopause. The FDA has convened doctors and experts to discuss testosterone for women, and the health department has met drugmakers about raising the supply of estrogen patches.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on women's health in March 2024. That order also focused on heart disease, menopause, endometriosis and Alzheimer's disease.

Monday's ceremony comes two weeks before the midterm elections. An August poll by the University of Amherst put Trump's approval among women at 29 percent, USA Today reported.

In the first Trump term, Melania Trump ran Be Best, a campaign for children and online safety. This term she has worked on foster care reform and technology access for education, and in September she launched IMPERIA, which brings women chief executives together to network and shape policy. The women's health order builds on that work, Beckman said.