For more than a decade, women's health advocates and a handful of dedicated leaders in Congress have been working to provide our nation's federal women's health offices with permanent statutory authorization.

These are important offices in key agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

They support and promote research on health conditions that affect women exclusively, differently or disproportionately than men. Their work is vital because, until the last 20 years, women of childbearing age were barred from participating in most medical research studies. As a result, we had very little concrete information about women's health. Most of the treatments prescribed for women were based on studies of men.

The situation today is improved, but much work remains to be done. The women's health offices are at the center of that process, guiding research and providing information to women across the nation, allowing them to make better-informed health-care decisions.

The women's health office at the FDA, for example, has funded numerous studies to better understand heart disease, which affects women more frequently and differently than men. Their brochures on women's health are among the most requested publications from the federal government's information clearinghouse in Pueblo, Colorado.

The women's health offices need permanent protection because they only exist now at the discretion of their agency's top official. They can be eliminated at any time or have their funding slashed. That was a real fear for the FDA office this year, when in February, reports surfaced that it would lose more than one-quarter of its operating budget in the middle of the fiscal year. It would have effectively shut down its operations, but public outcry helped prevent any cuts.

Protecting these offices should be a no-brainer. They do a great job protecting and promoting women's health on tiny budgets.

Unfortunately, the legislation to give them the support they need hasn't gained traction. The call to "support the women's health offices" doesn't capture the hearts and minds of legislators and citizens the way "fight cancer" or "cure diabetes" does. But the work of the women's health offices is no less important. Research is the foundation of all future treatments, and no treatment is effective without informed and engaged patients.

What can the presidential candidates do to help?

Their public, committed support for permanent authorization of the women's health offices can be the spark this legislation needs to become law in 2008. And if that doesn't work, as president, their powerful leadership from the White House can help usher the bill to passage.

Supporting the women's health offices may seem like a small or symbolic gesture, but it represents a broader commitment to advancing women's health, ensuring that the right research is conducted and that patients, regardless of their gender, race or age, receive the information and health care they need.

You can learn more about the Women's Health Office Act by visiting the Society's website, where you can send an e-mail to your members of Congress and express your opinion on this issue.