Rigorous research in cardiovascular physiology and medicine has led to critical advancements in preventing, diagnosing, and treating cardiovascular disease; however, striking disparities persist in cardiovascular disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. More than 60 million women are living with cardiovascular disease in the United States and cardiovascular disease remains the main cause of mortality, with more women dying from heart disease than all cancers combined (1). The cardiovascular disease burden associated with inequalities between women and men in healthcare delivery and efficacy accounts for a third of the women’s health gap in the United States. Recent analysis indicates that closing the gap in cardiovascular disease between men and women would lead to an increase in United States gross domestic product by $28 billion annually by 2040 (2). Yet, research on female-specific cardiovascular physiology, conditions, and disease remains severely underfunded (3). In 2023, less than 10% of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget was allocated to women’s health, and just 6% was dedicated to heart disease research, including both male and female predominant conditions (4).

In 2024, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a congressionally mandated consensus study report evaluating gaps and missed opportunities in women’s health research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (5). The report highlighted that “breakthroughs to improve women’s health have lagged across the research enterprise” and recommended a roadmap for addressing persisting gaps, including congressional support of $15.7 billion over 5 years, expansion of the role of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to include females in populations that experience disparities, and the creation of a new NIH institute focusing on female physiology and women’s health.

Recent and ongoing disruptions in federal funding, including budget cuts, restructuring of key agencies such as the NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and increasing restrictions on scientific inquiry, threaten to disproportionally affect women’s health research, an already underfunded field (6). These roadblocks and setbacks risk halting or even reversing progress, leading to delays in life-saving discoveries that will have devastating consequences not just in the United States but worldwide. This paper calls on the scientific community and academic institutions to take urgent actions to protect research and infrastructure, ensuring that hard-won gains in understanding sex-specific cardiovascular disease mechanisms are not lost in an already underfunded field.