The Lack of an Office of Men's Health is Hurting Women Too

in support of h.r.7602

There’s a looming false dichotomy that investing in men’s health divests from women’s health. Not only is that unfounded, but I’ve seen the contrary. When men fall through the cracks of the healthcare system, women frequently absorb the consequences. Women already carry much of the invisible workload of healthcare, with estimates of 82% of healthcare appointments for men booked by women.

Nowhere is this imbalance more consequential than in reproductive care: infertility affects roughly one in six couples worldwide, roughly split across gendered root causes. Yet evaluation still disproportionately begins, and often ends, with women. This isn’t anything new – the attribution of infertility to women dates back to before the Medieval Period. This historical perspective has persisted into modern medicine, where male infertility remains underrepresented in research, underscoring the need for a more inclusive approach to understanding and addressing a couple’s infertility.

Many will, and likely should, argue that men already benefit disproportionately from a healthcare system built around their needs, and that creating a dedicated office risks diverting resources from women’s health. I would be remiss to ignore the history of research design centered on male anatomy, physiology, and concerns. But the solution to decades of male-dominated research design is not to replicate that imbalance in the opposite direction — it is to fill the gaps that remain on both sides. Improving men’s health does not come at the expense of women’s health. In clinical practice, the two are deeply intertwined.

Male infertility contributes to roughly half of all infertile couples, yet research funding for male reproductive health represents only a fraction of what is directed toward female fertility research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Female infertility has received $1.3B across 3,482 projects; male infertility, $1B across 3,117 projects.Within organ-specific failure, $308M funded for ovarian failure versus $66M for testicular failure. This disparity would be easier to justify if prevalence were skewed, but male and female factor infertility affect patients at roughly equal rates. Beyond funding, the NIH has registered over 1,500 clinical trials related to ovarian failure, there have been just 7 for testicular failure. This 200-to-1 gap represents a total stagnation in male-specific innovation.

This research gap is widened by a growing economic disincentive. Over the last decade, inflation-adjusted Medicare reimbursement for urology has plummeted 47% in real terms—a steeper decline than the 33% seen in OBGYN. With a growing percentage of physicians opting out of seeing Medicare patients citing unsustainable finances, these cuts result in a lack of access to care for many of our most vulnerable patients. When reimbursement fails to meet the cost of care, access vanishes widening existing healthcare inequities.This surpasses academic concern: women frequently undergo invasive testing and treatment before male partners receive even basic evaluation due to a fundamental lack of awareness and concern, effectively treating female partners as the default explanation for a couple’s infertility. When men’s health is overlooked, women bear the consequences as well: medically, emotionally and financially. A healthcare system that neglects male evaluation ultimately shifts the burden of infertility care onto women. Patients coming in for male infertility referral report delays of months, thousands of dollars of debt, and painful exploratory procedures before even considering male infertility. If we care about women’s health, we must prioritize men’s as well. Stronger attention to men’s health ultimately strengthens family health outcomes.

Congress is now considering legislation to establish a dedicated Office of Men’s Health for the first time (H.R.7602). Like the Office on Women’s Health when it was first established, this initiative would begin by building the infrastructure needed to coordinate research, data collection, and public health strategy across federal agencies. While symbolic policymaking alone will not transform health outcomes overnight, codifying this office ensures that men’s health remains a documented priority rather than a fleeting awareness month. When the federal government is organized around a health priority, research gets funded, clinicians receive guidance and patients receive better care. Not doing so is contributing to the divisiveness that arises when we treat health as a zero-sum game, rather than a shared investment in the longevity of our communities. The Office of Men’s Health should not just be a bipartisan agreement, but across gender as well.