Health Across a Lifetime: WCC Symposium Recap

NEW YORK, N.Y.—June 30, 2026— Healthcare is not a single moment. It is a lifelong journey. Yet too many women and gender-expansive New Yorkers face that journey marked by barriers: to access, to affordability, to information, and to care itself.

That reality framed Women Creating Change's Health Across a Lifetime symposium, co-hosted with Women.NYC and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC) at Barnard College. The event brought together leaders from healthcare, policy, research, technology, and community-based organizations alongside students and community members to push beyond diagnosis toward what structural change in women's health actually looks like.

WCC President and CEO Sharon Sewell-Fairman opened the day with a personal charge. She spoke of her sister Simone, whose prior experiences of dismissal and trauma in the emergency room led her to refuse care after a fall. Simone died the following morning. She described her friend Karen, incorrectly told she had fibroids and not properly diagnosed with cancer until it was terminal.

"These are not just individual tragedies. They are reminders of what happens when people are dismissed, misdiagnosed, delayed, or made to feel that the healthcare system is not built for them," said Sharon Sewell-Fairman, President and CEO, Women Creating Change.

Opening remarks were also delivered by Diana Franco, Vice President of Innovation Industries at Women.NYC, and Mary Rocco, Director of Engaged Scholarship and Community Engagement at Barnard College. The program was guided throughout by MC Zehra Ansari, Senior Project Manager of Innovation Industries at NYC EDC.

Before the first panel, two Barnard students grounded the morning in lived experience. Mahabuba Masud, a recent graduate and incoming New York City Urban Fellow, spoke about navigating a fragmented healthcare system as a member of a low-income immigrant community and her advocacy work supporting sanctuary health protections for immigrant New Yorkers. Jacqueline Cecil described a decade-long journey to an endometriosis diagnosis, one that began when her pediatrician told a twelve-year-old she was playing too much tennis. Diagnosed at Stage 3 at age seventeen, she now teaches menstrual health and self-advocacy in high schools through the Endometriosis Foundation of America.

"It's important to talk about menstrual health because it shouldn't be taboo," said Jacqueline Cecil, Barnard Student and Health Advocate.

Endometriosis affects one in 10 people born with female organs, the same prevalence as diabetes, yet the average delay in diagnosis is 7 to 10 years. In fiscal year 2024, the NIH allocated just $28 million to endometriosis research, compared to $85 million for cystic fibrosis, which affects far fewer people.

The average age of menopause is 52, meaning many women will spend 30 to 40 percent of their lives in menopause. There is essentially no system in the body that is not affected by the loss of reproductive hormones. As Dr. Gossett noted, this life stage remains underfunded and understudied, a gap she linked to the broader devaluing of older women's health needs.

New York City is home to at least 80 active Women's Health companies, and 13 percent of US Women's Health founders are based here. From 2020 to 2025, those companies raised approximately $1.5 billion in funding supported by more than 280 investors. Two-thirds of femtech companies in New York City are led by women, compared to 20 percent of life sciences founders overall.

Closing the Women's Health gap in the US alone would add nearly $300 billion to GDP.

The first panel, moderated by Penny Cagan, Senior Risk Advisor, Educator, and WCC Board Member, examined the structural barriers shaping who receives care and what it will take to close gaps across the lifespan.

Yomaha Gordon, Director of Women's Health at Caribbean Women's Health Association, described the funding landscape as a constant source of anxiety for community-based organizations. "Every week, you really never know what's coming down, what grant is getting cut," said Yomaha Gordon, Director of Women's Health, Caribbean Women's Health Association.

Dr. Dana R. Gossett, Director of Sexual Medicine and Menopause at Northwestern Medicine, named underfunding of Women's Health research as the field's most significant long-term threat, and called out perimenopause as a critical and chronically overlooked life transition. "There's essentially no system in the body from your head to toe that doesn't have estrogen receptors, that isn't affected by the loss of reproductive hormones," Dr. Dana R. Gossett, MD MSCI, Director of Sexual Medicine and Menopause, Northwestern Medicine.

Chanel L. Porchia-Albert, Founder and Executive Director of Ancient Song Doula Services and Commissioner on the NYC Commission on Gender Equity, spoke about a healthcare system that has historically been extractive toward women of color and about the urgency of the current moment. "Right now is not the time to be quiet," Chanel L. Porchia-Albert, Founder and Executive Director, Ancient Song Inc.

Dr. Komal Bajaj, Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Chief Medical Officer at Biote, named the implementation gap as the barrier most deserving of attention, describing a health system exercise in which one in five completed quality improvement projects generated a disparity that was only visible when data was stratified by a structural variable like sex or language. "Regardless of what you're working on, no matter what it is, really think about who might be the populations that are left behind," Dr. Komal Bajaj, M.D., MS-HPEd, Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; CMO, Biote

Monica Malowney, Vice President of Life Sciences and Healthcare at NYC EDC, presented findings from a report on New York City's Women's Health innovation ecosystem released six weeks prior. New York City is home to at least 80 active Women's Health companies; 13 percent of US Women's Health founders are based here; and from 2020 to 2025, those companies raised approximately $1.5 billion in funding supported by more than 280 investors. Two-thirds of femtech companies in New York City are led by women, compared to 20 percent of life sciences founders overall. Malowney connected these figures directly to economic participation: women are spending more years of their lives in poor health than men, and most of that poor health is happening during prime working years. "Simply put, we cannot achieve economic justice for women if we do not first achieve health justice for women," Monica Malowney, M.P.H., Vice President, Life Sciences and Healthcare, NYC EDC.

The final panel, moderated by Misti Ushio, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Digitalis Ventures, explored what it will take to move Women's Health innovation from the lab into real-world impact.

Dr. Noemi Elhadad, Chair and Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, described the potential for AI to shorten diagnostic timelines for conditions like endometriosis by identifying patterns across fragmented data sources. She also raised the data privacy imperative: anonymization alone is insufficient, re-identification from health data is technically feasible, and the field needs both regulatory and technical solutions before patient trust can be established at scale.

Liz Powell, Founder of Women's Health Advocates, named recent federal wins including the removal of the black box warning for HRT, and outlined five priorities for meaningful change: increased research funding; better representation of diverse women in clinical trials; an FDA approval process designed for Women's Health; closing the reimbursement disparity between male and female patients; and sustained investment in education and awareness.

Dayna Sessa, CEO and Founder of Datanomy and engineering professor at Rutgers University, highlighted the opportunity in making fragmented health data coherent enough to tell a continuous story of women's health across their lives.

Dr. Glennis Mehra, Director of the Entrepreneurship Initiative at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, pointed to the NIH biological variable mandate as a structural shift already changing what researchers find and report, and expressed optimism about AI's potential for individualized care.

"We now have an opportunity technologically to actually do hyper segmentation both in the discovery and implementation delivery of care and therapies," Dr. Glennis Mehra, Director of the Entrepreneurship Initiative, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Throughout the day, panelists returned to a shared challenge: the gap between what is known and what reaches patients is not a technical problem. It is a values problem. Closing it requires sustained investment in community-based organizations, equity lenses applied to every project at every scale, and the willingness of every person in the room to leave with one concrete action.

WCC looks forward to continuing these conversations and turning them into action.

The Health Across a Lifetime symposium was co-hosted by Women Creating Change, Women.NYC, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC), in partnership with Barnard College.