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about women's health Hub
The pieces exist. Now it is time to connect them.
Real work is already happening, in research, in reports, in the field. What's missing is a shared, living view that connects it. Researchers don't always know who else is studying the same disease. Funders can't easily see where investment is already flowing. Founders, clinicians, and advocates plan their next move without a full view of what's already underway.
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Women's Health Hub exists to connect that picture, starting in the United States, with the goal of growing further as the ecosystem does.
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what we are
An organization built to bring the information together.
Women's Health Hub exists to build the shared infrastructure and common space connecting people, organizations, and knowledge across the field. So much good work is already underway across women's health; the Hub's role is to help it come into focus as one connected picture. Organizations already doing the work stay in the lead; the Hub makes it possible for them to find each other, and to see what everyone else is seeing.
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Curioius how the Hub is built? Read our methodology.
Why sex-based differences?
For most of medical history, research, funding, and care have defaulted to a male standard, and the science of sex-based difference has stayed under-resourced and hard to find. Women's Health Hub exists to put that science at the center: it's the specific focus of everything we map, curate, and build.
Why an ecosystem approach?
No single organization can build that shared picture alone. Women's Health Hub connects the researchers, funders, founders, clinicians, and advocates already doing the work, so the full picture finally comes into focus, and every part of the ecosystem can plan, invest, and act on what's actually happening, not just what's visible from where they sit.
mission
Build the shared infrastructure that lets the women's health ecosystem see itself clearly.
When knowledge, connections, and collective action move at the same speed as the work already underway, progress accelerates for everyone in it.
purpose
Connect people, organizations, and knowledge across women's health, starting with the science of sex-based difference.
So every part of the ecosystem, research, funding, care, and policy, can plan, invest, and act on one shared picture instead of many separate ones.
Connection first
We connect what already exists rather than duplicating it. Organizations already doing the work stay in the lead.
rooted in the science
Sex-based difference, under-resourced for most of medical history, is the specific focus of everything we map, curate, and build.
built to grow
Today's picture starts with the US ecosystem. Growing it further, and going deeper as the Compendium matures, is part of the plan.
I've always been interested in women's stories. From my time as a performer with the Montreal All-Star Cheerleaders and the independent theatre company I co-founded, foundWave, I got a front-row view of how women would flex to make any narrative fit. We could be Han Solo or Princess Leia or Yoda (definitely a Gen Xer moment). I had no idea that this is also how our healthcare gets decided. Women just needed to flex, so whatever data existed could fit our circumstances.
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I was diagnosed with endometriosis in my mid-20s. I was told there was a great support group I could join, and that was the option. Take naproxen, try different diets, use hormonal birth control, and try to manage. All the options were to manage. And I did.
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Then, during a low period at work in 2023, I started looking into perimenopause. I knew I'd been affected for years but had never really dug into it. When I finally did, it was shocking: nothing had really changed since my endometriosis diagnosis in 1999. Take naproxen, try different diets, use hormonal treatment, and try to manage. I had the time, so I took a deep dive.
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My background is a combination of systems thinking and storytelling: 25+ years across biotech, pharma, medtech, and digital health, on top of that early life in performance. What are the pieces, and how do they go together. So I started asking those questions of women's health. What was happening, what were the pieces, who were the people, and how did it all fit together?
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A few months later, I had the idea for the Women's Health Hub and a Compendium of sex-based difference, and I submitted it to ARPA-H's Sprint for Women's Health. So many people were focused on research or funding, but almost no one was looking at translation, at the huge gap in getting what's already known into training and practice. I had no idea what I was doing, but I started anyway: meeting people, learning more.
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I didn't get the funding through ARPA-H, but two and a half years later, here we are. AI has come a long way, and we've reached a starting point: a place where you can see what's happening across the ecosystem, so we don't have to start from square one every time.
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The Hub is my attempt to build a picture that actually reflects where we are as an ecosystem and what can accelerate our growth. I'm excited to see where this goes, and even more excited to see who joins in building it with us.
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Thank you for everything you're doing to move women's health forward.
founder story
Shannon Lee Topinka
Founder, Women's Health Hub
Co-founder, SoCal Women's Health Collective