ida-no doctors

October 20, 2026

Tonight: a new women’s health division at NIH but without money (yet), what happens when the OB-GYNs leave, and more.

— Meghan McCarthy

Trump signed an executive order Monday directing NIH to create a women’s health division, though he “did not appear to be aware” that the agency already has a women’s health research office, Washington Post reports. The new division won’t replace that office. No new funding was announced, despite NIH seeing significant cuts under this administration. And as STAT notes, grants with the word “women” in them triggered special reviews. The Biden administration launched a White House women’s health research initiative in 2023, this order explicitly revokes it. Women’s health groups, including the national OB-GYN society, welcomed the announcement, but added that “robust and sustained funding is necessary.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has updated its menopause guidance for the first time since 2014, strongly recommending hormone therapy for hot flashes and related sleep problems for women who don’t have a medical reason to avoid it. The group recommends starting before age 60 or within 10 years of menopause. For women who can’t or won’t take hormones, the group backs certain antidepressants and newer nonhormonal drugs Veozah and Lynkuet, and it doesn’t support soy or herbal supplements. The guidance lands 10 days after the American College of Physicians, which sets guidance for internists, recommended hormones as first-line treatment.

More than a third of Idaho’s OB-GYNs have stopped practicing obstetrics, left the state, closed their practices or retired since its abortion ban took effect in 2022, The New York Times reports. Half of the state’s 44 counties have no practicing obstetrician. One Boise practice has interviewed 15 doctors since the ban, and only two took the job. In Moscow, a family doctor waited nearly an hour, her C-section patient’s abdomen still open, for the OB on call to come in from Washington. Another patient’s baby died in the second trimester, and her doctor couldn’t find mifepristone, even at pharmacies across the border. The woman waited two days to deliver on misoprostol alone. “My job is to keep a woman safe,” said Boise OB-GYN Becky Uranga. “But right now, there’s a limit to how well I can do that.”

Freestanding birth centers handled 0.6% of U.S. births in 2024, up from 0.2% in 2004, according to a Commonwealth Fund analysis. But deliveries have declined slightly since 2022, and the number of centers isn’t increasing. Among families who gave birth at one, 39% paid out of pocket, compared with 3% of hospital births. Medicaid covered 18% of birth center births, versus 41% of hospital births. Where Medicaid does pay, rates in a nine-state study ranged from about $1,300 per birth in New Jersey to about $6,000 in Massachusetts. Ten states have no birth centers at all. The authors blame low reimbursement, strict licensing rules, and a shortage of midwives with birth center experience.

Postmenopausal women who started testosterone were more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than similar women who didn’t, according to preliminary research to be presented at The Menopause Society’s annual meeting this week. Researchers compared health records for more than 6,300 women. Over an average of nearly three years, nearly 4% of women on testosterone developed at least one of the conditions tracked, including coronary artery disease, stroke and heart failure, compared with 0.5% of women who weren’t on testosterone. The findings come from a conference abstract, and the observational study shows an association, not that testosterone caused the problems. There is no FDA-approved testosterone product for women in the U.S. “Long-term safety data on testosterone use in women are lacking,” said Stephanie Faubion, the society’s medical director.