After four years in the White House as First Lady, Jill Biden is stepping into a new and influential public role that continues the work she began during her husband’s presidency—this time from outside government.
On April 29, the Milken Institute, a California-based nonpartisan economic think tank, announced that Jill Biden would serve as chair of its newly launched Women’s Health Network, a sweeping initiative aimed at mobilizing public and private collaboration to revolutionize the way women’s health is funded, researched, and delivered in the United States and beyond.
Her appointment comes as part of a broader movement to correct long-standing gender imbalances in medical research and treatment, and it marks a continuation of the personal and policy interests that defined her time as First Lady.
In a press release issued by the Milken Institute, Biden said, “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. 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.”
Based in Santa Monica, California, the Milken Institute is a well-known think tank that focuses on global financial, public health, and environmental challenges.
It hosts the annual Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, a high-profile event that draws international business leaders, policymakers, academics, and philanthropists.
Biden was introduced in her new role at the institute’s 28th conference, which also featured appearances by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Trump-era Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services head Mehmet Oz, among others.
Biden’s new title as chair of the Women’s Health Network gives her a national platform to unite leaders, experts, and funders behind a long-neglected cause: advancing equity in healthcare by ensuring that women’s specific health needs are properly studied, funded, and addressed by the medical system.
As First Lady, Jill Biden made women’s health and caregiving issues a focal point of her public service. She helped lead the Biden administration’s Joining Forces initiative to support military and veteran families, as well as the Biden Cancer Moonshot, which aims to reduce cancer death rates and improve care.
But perhaps her most visible and trailblazing contribution was her work on the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, a program launched by President Joe Biden in 2023 through a presidential memorandum.
Jill Biden led that effort, advocating for a transformation in the way government and research institutions approach women’s health. At the Milken Global Conference, she elaborated on the origins of the White House initiative, explaining that she and her husband were alarmed by how few federal dollars were flowing toward diseases and conditions primarily affecting women. “
Joe said, ‘Let’s infuse the federal government with money,’” she recounted. “So one of the things we did was we got to work right away. In one year, we put in $1 billion to advance women’s research.”
Biden said the funding was strategically distributed through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DOD), among other agencies, and was designed not just to increase volume, but to restructure the way research is conducted.
The administration pushed for disaggregated data—separating results by gender—to avoid the persistent problem of women being underrepresented in clinical trials and data sets.
“We made sure that they separated the research on women and men differently,” Biden explained. She also spoke about efforts to “de-risk” the investment landscape by putting public funds toward areas of research that private investors have historically avoided due to financial uncertainty.
“Private equity wasn’t willing to take it on because it was too risky,” she said. “So we thought, let’s push this forward and let’s try to find answers more quickly.”
This emphasis on systemic reform reflects the Biden administration’s broader criticism of the U.S. medical research establishment, which it argued had long ignored the distinct biology and needs of women.
In launching the White House initiative, the administration stated that too many medical studies had been built on male test subjects, resulting in dosage recommendations, treatment plans, and even textbooks that don’t properly apply to women.
The implications of this oversight are enormous, as women often present different symptoms for common diseases, react differently to medications, and have unique health conditions that remain underfunded or poorly understood.
The new Women’s Health Network at Milken will attempt to build on this foundation by bringing together researchers, healthcare companies, policymakers, and investors to create a more balanced and effective women’s health ecosystem.
Jill Biden’s transition to the Milken Institute also coincides with the end of her long-standing teaching career. She served as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College from 2009 until December 2024, making her the only First Lady in U.S. history to hold a full-time job while in the White House.
She concluded her final semester as her husband’s presidency came to a close. While Joe Biden chose not to seek re-election, Jill Biden has signaled that her post-White House years will be anything but quiet.
Her new role at Milken positions her as a leading national voice on women’s health at a time when reproductive rights, healthcare disparities, and the role of gender in medicine are all intensely debated across the country.
The announcement of her new position also comes amid renewed scrutiny of the Biden administration as several political books about the 2024 campaign cycle prepare to hit bookshelves.
One such book, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, reportedly claims that President Biden’s aides decided against having him take a cognitive test in February 2024 out of concern that the act of taking it could itself reinforce voter concerns about his age and mental acuity.
Another book, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, written by Chris Whipple, alleges that White House aides went so far as to isolate the president from friends and longtime allies, fearing that unfiltered conversations might lead to verbal missteps and reinforce negative narratives.
These reports, while unconfirmed, have contributed to a growing political dialogue around the end of Biden’s term and what legacy, if any, Jill Biden intends to shape from here.
Some political analysts have speculated that Jill Biden’s continued visibility could also serve to stabilize or reinforce the Biden family’s public image amid those criticisms.
Her participation in national forums, particularly those with bipartisan or international reach such as the Milken Conference, enables her to reframe the conversation around service, science, and coalition-building—areas where the Biden brand retains broad support.
Jill Biden has consistently emphasized that her work is grounded in a nonpartisan mission. Her focus on health, caregiving, education, and family has enabled her to work across political lines and win support from a wide spectrum of organizations, from veteran groups to medical associations and educational institutions.
The Milken Institute, for its part, has praised Biden’s “visionary leadership” and her ability to mobilize action around women’s health, an area where the think tank sees tremendous unmet potential.
While the Institute is known primarily for its economic and investment focus, it has in recent years expanded its health programming and launched partnerships with a wide range of health systems, corporations, and research universities.
The new Women’s Health Network is expected to convene working groups, issue policy recommendations, launch public-private pilot programs, and foster investment in underfunded areas such as autoimmune diseases, menopause research, maternal health, and mental wellness.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Milken Institute for further comment on Biden’s appointment but did not immediately receive a response. However, supporters of the initiative say her presence alone sends a powerful signal about the urgency and importance of the work.
In a political and scientific landscape where women’s health has often been relegated to the sidelines, Jill Biden’s post-White House mission is to ensure it moves center stage.
