Melania Trump’s rounds of East Wing meetings with physicians and health officials have produced a presidential order, a new division inside the National Institutes of Health and a task force co-chaired by the White House chief of staff.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles took on a second job Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, as co-chair of First Lady Melania Trump’s new women’s health task force, which President Donald Trump created by executive order at a Rose Garden signing.
The order, titled “Advancing Women’s Health to Improve Outcomes in All Phases of Life,” also establishes a Women’s Health Division inside the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Wiles will share the task force gavel with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The initiative grew out of a run of meetings the first lady convened in the East Wing with physicians, outside experts and Health and Human Services officials. She shaped the order in consultation with Kennedy and the president.
The Ice Maiden Gets a Second Job
Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, is a veteran operative known around Washington as “the Ice Maiden.” Her appointment landed about a week after she was batting down reports of a slipping grip on the West Wing.
She took the first seat in the front row and beamed as the president told the audience she had recently beaten breast cancer. “She’s tough. She’s a tremendous fighter,” Trump said.
Wiles stood on stage in her aviator sunglasses while both Trumps signed, and she accepted one signing pen from the president as a gift. She never went to the microphone.
The appointment had been planned well in advance, Wiles said in an interview. She credited the first lady with conceiving the effort and setting its strategy, and added that it simply fit, as the first female chief of staff who had been through cancer herself.
What the First Lady Promised
Melania Trump introduced the order before her husband spoke, telling the Rose Garden crowd that it set a new standard for women’s health in the country. “Beginning today we will change the reality of women’s health,” she said.
She pointed to artificial intelligence as a way to speed medical discoveries and said care should be affordable and available. Her office released a document it calls the First Lady’s Five Pillars of Women’s Health Innovation, and the task force was set to convene for the first time later that day.
Trump took an unscripted detour into White House renovations, including the patio stone now covering what was once the Rose Garden lawn, then returned to the subject.
The Order Sets No Funding Goals
The order gives NIH 90 days to stand up the Women’s Health Division, which will not replace the agency’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, established in 1990. The new division’s mandate is broader, reaching beyond research.
Beyond the two co-chairs, the task force takes in the secretaries of war, labor, agriculture, education and veterans affairs, along with the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), among others. The order sets no specific funding goals. The task force will coordinate with federal agencies and programs, the administration said.
The order revokes former President Joe Biden’s March 2024 executive order on advancing women’s health research. It also revokes a November 2023 memorandum that created a White House initiative on the subject.
The order flags a list of conditions as needing more study: Alzheimer’s disease, endometriosis, polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome, infertility, maternal health, menopause, osteoporosis, heart disease, stroke, fibroids and chronic pain.
The ceremony came weeks before the Nov. 3 elections, with Trump’s approval ratings sagging, including among women. About four in 10 independent women supported Trump in the 2024 election, a figure that fell to roughly a quarter in the opening months of this midterm year, according to AP-NORC polls.
The Hire Wiles Didn’t Know About
A week before the ceremony, Wiles was fighting reports that her tenure was in trouble. Those reports cited Trump’s hiring of Katie Zacharia as White House press secretary without Wiles’ input, and staffers arguing over who would absorb blame if Republicans lose the November midterm election.
Trump publicly ruled out any chance she would be fired and predicted a long run for her in the job. Zacharia was ousted Friday, Oct. 16, after just five days as press secretary.
The alliance with the first lady hands Wiles a formidable ally as much of her original circle has scattered. Former deputy chief of staff James Blair, former Office of Legislative Affairs head James Braid, former White House counsel David Warrington and former press secretary Karoline Leavitt — campaign staffers who followed her in — have all departed. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and communications director Steven Cheung remain in powerful West Wing posts.
Melania Trump reached out to Wiles during the chief of staff’s breast cancer treatment, and the two have a cordial relationship. Wiles announced in September that she is cancer-free. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Wiles posted on social media after the ceremony that the work is personal to her, describing her own breast cancer experience as a lesson in what catching the disease early and good care can mean. She thanked both Trumps for taking up the cause.
