UC Santa Barbara

Across the tree of life, female animals share biological characteristics that place them at risk for similar diseases and disorders. Greater awareness of these shared vulnerabilities can accelerate insight and innovation in women's health. We present a broadly comparative approach to female health that can inform issues ranging from mammary, ovarian, and endometrial cancer to preeclampsia, osteoporosis, and infertility. Our focus on female health highlights the interdependence of human, animal, and environmental health. As the boundaries between human and animal environments become blurred, female animals across species are exposed to increasingly similar environmental hazards. As such, the health of female animals has unprecedented relevance to the field of woman's health. Expanding surveillance of animal populations beyond zoonoses to include noncommunicable diseases can strengthen women's health prevention efforts as environmental factors are increasingly implicated in human mortality. The physiology of nonhuman females can also spark innovation in women's health. There is growing interest in those species of which the females appear to have a level of resistance to pathologies that claim millions of human lives every year. These physiologic adaptations highlight the importance of biodiversity to human health. Insights at the intersection of women's health and planetary health can be a rich source of innovations benefitting the health of all animals across the tree of life.