Meet the woman behind the nonprofit fighting to close the gender health gap.
Carolee Lee is taking action to change women’s health. Women drive the economy. We make up 57% of the workforce1, make 83% of spending decisions2 and will control 67% of the country’s wealth by 20303.
But, you might be surprised to learn that despite our economic significance, women are hardly, if ever, represented in critical medical research – even when the studied disease affects women disproportionately.
It was this disparity that led Carolee Lee, CEO and Founder of nonprofit Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM), to pose the following question:
If women drive the economy and women’s health is understudied, how is the economy affected if women’s health research is accelerated?
As the former founder and CEO of Carolee Designs, a leading women’s fashion accessories brand with a workforce made up of approximately 85% women, Carolee knew firsthand about the financial implications of women’s health. “I realized that if my employees were ill, or had to take care of an elderly or ill family member, it affected my bottom line. It affected the ability of my business to perform at the highest level. I knew as a business owner that having a healthy workforce was imperative,” says Carolee, who took extra steps to ensure her employees’ wellbeing like stocking healthy snacks in the office kitchen, and enrolling everyone in a health club. “If my workforce was healthier, my bottom line was stronger.”
After selling her business in 2001, Carolee channeled her passion for supporting the wellbeing of women into the creation of her first nonprofit AccessCircles, a by-invitation global community focused on providing women resources for life planning and wellness. During an AccessCircles event in 2018, she presented the above data, and in response to the shock of the attendees, the WHAM initiative was born.
“A good friend of mine who was the head of human resources and public affairs at a major pharma company came up to me and said ‘It (the data) has got to be wrong. I’ve been in this position 25 years; I would know this,’” says Carolee. “But it wasn’t wrong. And so I thought, ‘Okay, how do we change this?’”
In my opinion, ethically, no person can look at these numbers and say ‘this isn’t a good idea.’
To answer this question, she assembled a group of 15 key women from institutions funding women’s health research for a meeting at the prestigious Connors Center at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s hospital. It was at this meeting that the women recognized they all shared a common experience in their careers. “What we realized is that if you start talking to a group of men about inequality, they often shut down,” says Carolee. “We needed a more effective and inclusive way of thinking and speaking about this issue.” Enter: the economic impact.
WHAM commissioned leading nonprofit research organization RAND Corporation to study the notion that increased funding in women’s health could benefit the economy. After a year of exploration and analysis, their findings made one thing abundantly clear: Carolee’s instinct was right.
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Through the WHAM Collaborative – a group of leaders, researchers and clinicians from a wide range of institutions including Johns Hopkins, Northwell Health, American Heart Association, Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School, and Mount Sinai, among many others – The WHAM Report is being used to propel real, tangible change in both practice and policy. For example, WHAM Collaborative member Erica Ollmann Saphire, who serves as President and CEO of globally-ranked research leader La Jolla Institute for Immunology, recently made an institutional commitment to investing more in health research that focuses on women in response to WHAM data. And recently, more than 25 leading health organizations – many at the urgency of WHAM Collaborative members – signed on to Congressional resolutions calling for expanded women’s health research. The resolution cites data from The WHAM Report and urges Congress to double its investment for heart, Alzheimer’s and rheumatoid arthritis research focused on women.
Carolee plans to expand WHAM’s Investigator’s Fund, which directly supports innovative women’s health research like developing heart assessments that better identify risk in women, or examining whether sleep improvements in women lead to lower Alzheimer’s risk biomarkers. The expansion will include a new crowd-funded module on their website, that will enable individual researchers to raise funds to apply for research grants to study specific diseases that affect women. “I love this idea because there are so many small amounts of money that have so much impact to a researcher,” says Carolee. “$10,000 to $15,000 can really make a difference.”
This is a wonderful way for all women to play in the sandbox, to lead a change that impacts their daughters, their granddaughters, future generations.
Carolee’s next priority is to bring the mission of WHAM back to where it started: women business owners. “This is a wonderful way for all women to play in the sandbox, to lead a change that impacts their daughters, their granddaughters, future generations,” she says. “And as much as I really want to include men, and they need to be included… I think women are the ones who will drive this to success!” »
Want to learn more or get involved? Visit thewhamreport.org.
