Melania Trump Announces White House Women’s Health Initiative

Melania Trump, the first lady, made a rare Rose Garden appearance on Monday to announce a new White House initiative to advance women’s health, two weeks before a midterm election in which polls show that just one-third of American women express support for President Trump and the Republican Party.

The initiative, outlined in an executive order issued by Mr. Trump, will include a new Division of Women’s Health within the National Institutes of Health, and a new Women’s Health Task force within the White House.

But the N.I.H. already has an Office of Research on Women’s Health, created in 1990 during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, and it is unclear whether the Trump administration is putting any money behind the new division. Officials said the division would not replace the original office but would collaborate with it.

“Our mission must serve women at every stage of life, from young girls just starting out to mothers dealing with a complex range of responsibilities, to mature women who deserve to have vitality, dignity and independence,” Mrs. Trump said as the president looked on.

Women’s organizations and patient groups have been clamoring for years for the federal government to spend more on women’s health. Some said the executive order would accomplish little without new funding from Congress.

The Trump administration has already done an about-face on women’s health research. In April of last year, a few months after Mr. Trump took office, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to slash funding for the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-running, taxpayer-funded study of a broad range of women’s health issues that began in the 1990s.