Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

I got to know Dr. Vonda Wright while preparing for the Women’s Wellness Summit in Los Angeles, and one of the things Vonda Wright MD, MS I’ve loved most is learning from her about muscle. Vonda has a way of making you rethink what strength means for women as we age. Muscle isn’t about how we look or how much we can lift. It’s about how we move, how we stay independent, and how we age on our own terms. The more I learned from her, the more questions I had. That’s what great teachers do.

I’ve spent my career watching for the moment when something the world treats as niche is actually the next big thing. And for me that was protein 25 years ago. I believe we are living through that same moment with women’s health and longevity; and Vonda is one of the people leading it. Now she’s putting her energy behind something much bigger than a conversation.

Vonda has joined forces with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging to launch Move the Mountain, with an ambitious goal: raise $79MM for women’s health research. It’s $1 million for every mile of a 79-mile mountain challenge beginning this September in Park City, Utah.

I love the ambition, but even more, I love the action behind it. When you look at the numbers, you understand why the ambition has to be this big. Only 8.8% of NIH research spending from 2013–2023 targeted women’s health. A National Academies report found that meaningfully closing the gap would require $15.7 billion in federal funding over five years.

The cost of doing nothing is enormous. Research estimates that the global health gap for women costs roughly 75 million years of healthy life every year. Closing that gap could give the average woman roughly 500 additional healthy days over her lifetime.

Five hundred days, that’s not just a statistic, it’s time with grandchildren, being active on a trail, or living life fully rather than simply getting by.Let’s circle back to muscle matters. Sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength, is estimated to cost the U.S. healthcare system roughly $18.5 billion annually. Researchers estimate that reducing its prevalence by just 10% could save $1.1 billion a year. That is what meaningful research investment can return: not just healthier women, but a healthier system. And this is why Move the Mountain matters so much to me.

We spend a tremendous amount of time talking about the gaps in women’s health research, and here Vonda is doing something about it.

She is putting her body, name, and resources behind 79 miles of mountain; and asking the rest of us to put something behind it too.She is putting her money where her mouth is. I believe women like Vonda need to be celebrated. More importantly, they need to be backed. So consider this me doing both. Learn more & support the campaign: https://lnkd.in/g3jTgANr