Michael Annichine: Why Women’s Health Belongs in the Career Conversation | MOVE Like This

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first and always available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here

Sponsored by Radical Pricing by Jody Padar, CPA | See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines Research podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

The 2026 Accounting MOVE Project report examines how caregiving affects women’s careers. A newly released MOVE Like This episode explores another part of that conversation: whether women’s own healthcare needs are being heard.

Supporting women’s careers requires understanding the lives they lead beyond work.

That connection comes into focus with the release of the 2026 Accounting MOVE Project report, Caught in the Middle: How Caregiving Pressures Are Reshaping Women’s Careers in Public Accounting, which examines how caregiving pressures affect advancement in public accounting. Among participating firms, 47% reported seeing caregiving slow progress toward promotion or partnership, and 76% said the career impact falls mostly on women.

MORE MOVE Like This | MORE Caregiving Research | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

Released alongside the report, this episode of MOVE Like This broadens the discussion to women’s health. Host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk talks with Michael Annichine, CEO of Magee-Womens Research Institute & Foundation at the time of the recording, about gaps in medical research, the importance of listening, and what happens when women’s concerns are dismissed.

The conversation offers a useful perspective for accounting leaders considering the report’s findings: Understanding what people need is only the beginning. Institutions also have to act on what they learn.

Editor’s note: This episode was recorded April 16, 2024. References to the president refer to then-President Joe Biden. Discussion of federal initiatives, research funding, and diversity, equity, and inclusion reflects the context at the time of recording.

Closing the knowledge gap
Much of Annichine’s work centers on a fundamental problem: Medical research has not always adequately accounted for women’s bodies and experiences. Historically, concerns about pregnancy and hormonal fluctuations contributed to women’s exclusion or underrepresentation in research. Findings from studies involving men were often treated as broadly applicable, Annichine explains, despite differences that could affect treatment.

 

Sponsored by Radical Pricing by Jody Padar, CPA | See Today’s Special Offer

“In the early ’90s, we learned that women weren’t small men,” he says.

The NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 established a legal requirement to include women and minorities in NIH-supported clinical research. That milestone strengthened inclusion requirements; it did not mark the beginning of all research involving women. Changing research requirements, however, could not immediately fill longstanding gaps in knowledge. Annichine points to progress in breast cancer care as an example of what sustained attention and investment can accomplish.

“If you don’t invest in something, you can’t see returns,” he says.

Listening creates an obligation to respond
The conversation moves from research to a challenge familiar to leaders in any profession: building trust with people who have been overlooked or poorly served. Annichine’s starting point is straightforward. Listen before deciding what someone needs. Involve people in developing solutions. Then demonstrate that their participation mattered.

“We don’t hand down solutions to them,” he says. “We understand what their needs are, and then we work together with them.”

Trust suffers when organizations collect people’s experiences and concerns, then disappear without responding. Even modest action can help establish a different relationship.

“Even if that action is small, you need to get small wins with those communities and build trust together,” Annichine says.

Buol Ruszczyk connects that responsibility directly to her work with accounting firms. Asking employees to share personal experiences through diversity surveys creates an obligation to use the information thoughtfully. Leaders may not be able to address every comment, but they need a plan for responding.

That lesson also offers a practical way to approach the 2026 MOVE report: Ask employees about the pressures affecting their work, involve them in identifying useful support, and follow through.

Women need to be heard as patients, too
For women navigating healthcare, being heard can have deeply personal consequences.

Buol Ruszczyk shares her experience of having symptoms dismissed in her 20s before eventually receiving a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease. Her story illustrates the frustration of knowing something is wrong while struggling to get answers. Annichine encourages patients to remain engaged, ask questions, explain what they are experiencing, and seek another opinion when needed.

“You’re the expert of your body,” he says.

His advice also underscores why women’s health belongs in a broader conversation about careers. Employees bring their own health needs to work alongside responsibilities to children, partners, parents, and others. Understanding those circumstances gives leaders a better starting point for meaningful support.

Turning understanding into action
The 2026 MOVE report asks firms to look beyond whether flexibility keeps people employed and consider whether their careers continue to advance. Annichine’s conversation offers a complementary challenge: Look beyond assumptions about women’s needs and listen to their experiences.

For him, investment in women’s health has implications far beyond any individual patient.

“If we’re not investing in women’s health, we’re not investing in our future as a society,” he says.

For accounting leaders, the episode and report provide an opportunity to examine how well their organizations understand the people they hope to retain and advance—and what they will do with that understanding.

Quotables:

• On the history of women’s health research:?“In the early ’90s, we learned that women weren’t small men.” 
• On the funding gap:?“If you don’t invest in something, you can’t see returns.” 
• On working with underserved communities:?“We don’t build solutions for communities; we build solutions with communities.” 
• On rebuilding trust:?“Even if that action is small, you need to get small wins with those communities and build trust together.”
• On advocating for your health:?“You’re the expert of your body, so don’t take an answer that you don’t believe in and run with it.” 
• On why women’s health matters:?“If we’re not investing in women’s health, we’re not investing in our future as a society.” 

5 Key Takeaways

1. Women’s health research has a remarkably short modern history. Requirements to include women in NIH-funded clinical research date only to 1993, leaving significant gaps in what researchers and healthcare providers know about conditions affecting women.
2. Research funding matters. Progress in breast cancer treatment demonstrates what sustained attention and investment can accomplish, while many other areas of women’s health remain comparatively underfunded and understudied.
3. Trust can’t be rebuilt by telling historically underserved communities to trust institutions again. Organizations need to listen, involve people in creating solutions, take visible action, and demonstrate over time that their input matters.
4. Patients should remain active participants in their own healthcare. Ask questions, communicate what you’re experiencing, seek second opinions when necessary, and don’t ignore your own knowledge of your body.
5. Improving women’s health isn’t a niche issue. Better research and better care for women have implications for families, workplaces, communities, and future generations.

Transcript
(Transcripts have not been edited for spelling, grammar, or punctuation.)

Bonnie: [00:00:00] Thank you for being here today for this episode of Move Like This. I am really looking forward to this conversation with Michael Aniken from Magee-Womens Research Institute and Foundation, he- where he is the CEO. And first of all, thank you for being here today. Thanks for having me, Bonnie. Yeah. I got to, um, know Michael, um, I guess about six, seven months ago when we were both on a DEI panel at the, uh, Accounting and Financial Women’s Alliance Women Who Count Conference.

That is a lot to say all at once. Um, and I wanted to have him on the podcast, and I, I realize that we typically focus on and talk to those that are in the accounting profession. [00:01:00] Um, but what we do for a living is only part of our daily lives. We’re all friends, parents, children, you know, uh, members of communities.

We have hobbies and a whole lot of other things that make all of us unique people, but one thing we do have in common is the need for healthcare. So no matter how healthy you are today, we all get sick, and we have to interact with the healthcare system. So before we go further, um, I’d like for you to tell our audience about Magee-Womens Research Institute and Foundation and what it does, and then we’ll dive into a deeper conversation on the healthcare, uh, profession as a whole.

Michael: Sure. So Magee-Womens Research Institute is the largest research institute in the United States that’s focused solely on women’s health and reproductive biology. We cover everything from pregnancy and early human development all the way [00:02:00] through to diseases of aging, like cancer, heart disease, or pelvic floor issues, and really everything in between, all the benign gynecology, fertility issues, infectious disease that a woman will face over her lifespan.

We call it a lifespread, uh, approach to women’s health or nine to 90, the nine months we spend in utero and then the next 90 years of health and wellness. We have collaborations in 20 different countries on five continents and with every major medical center in the United States, and really what we’re doing is creating the underlying knowledge that most health systems consume when it comes to women’s health.

Bonnie: Since women’s health as a field has only been 30 years old, there’s a lot of, uh, misunderstanding or lack of understanding in the women’s health space that we’re trying to communicate and educate, uh, healthcare systems. Wow, that’s great. Um, and since the time when we were preparing for that DEI panel [00:03:00] discussion, um, I remember on our initial call sitting slack-jawed when you said that women were only included or allowed in clinical trials starting in 1993, so that 30-year reference you just made.

Um, and that was, you know, not to share my age too much, but that was two years after I graduated from college. So can you give us a bit of history on the inequities in medical research and the healthcare industry, and tell us a little bit more about what McGhee is doing to address them? Yeah. So I, you know, I think to take a step back and take a look at how we got there.

Michael: Uh, in the ’70s, in 1977, Congress mandated that, uh, drug companies no longer need to use any women in clinical trials or anything. Not that they were doing it in the first place. They were not required to do it, and they weren’t doing it. Uh, and it was a [00:04:00] cost-saving mechanism because, you know, women would get pregnant during the trial and would have to be dismissed from the trial.

Uh, they were also more expensive ’cause if you needed 100 baseline subjects, you had to recruit 300 or 400 women because they had hormonal fluctuations during the process of the trial. So they didn’t wanna deal with that, so they said, “Look, you know, we, we- there’s no need to do that. We’ll just do all this medical research on men, and then we’ll translate the findings for women.”

Well, that, uh, you know, that was 1977, so that was in our lifetime. You know, you and I are about the same age, so we, we were around then. And, uh, what they found was that didn’t work very well. By the early ’90s, we had already learned that the… some drugs that had cleared the FDA and got approved for market, uh, were really harmful to women because they metabolized very differently in women than they were in men.

In fact, in the early ’90s, we learned that women weren’t small men. And so it’s, it’s funny. We make a joke of it now, but r- this was in our lifetime, which is what [00:05:00] makes me… it, it kinda cracks me up how far we’ve come in just a 30-year period. So in 1993, the NIH Revitalization Act required that women be included in clinical trials, uh, in order for drugs to pass the FDA trials.

But still today, even 30 years later, only 13 cents on every NIH dollar invested in, in healthcare research goes to women’s health issues, and only 2% of all philanthropic efforts go to women’s related causes. So there’s still this inequity. There’s still this funding gap. And if you don’t invest in something, you can’t see returns.

And so, you know, women’s health for us is what we do, and so I spend a lot of time advocating for those investment dollars. I was in DC last week. As you know, the president in his State of the Union Address asked Congress for $12 billion to be invested in women’s health. The NIH has a $47 billion budget, and only about $4 billion of that goes into women’s health [00:06:00] initiatives.

So that $12 billion number was aimed at trying to level the playing field a little bit and give us a better understanding of women’s health as we know it today. Part of the challenge is it goes from, you know, for, for, for any innovation or knowledge to go from the bench or the laboratory into the bedside or, or into the marketplace, um, it’s on average about a 17-year life cycle.

So with only 30 years of research to pull from, we’re only talking, we’re less than two cycles in. So there’s a real knowledge gap that still exists today that we’re out there every day trying to articulate and better understand and, and, and it’s a challenge, and it’s one that we, we fight with only a handful of people in our corner because there’s not many women’s research institutes out there I, I, again, am a bit slack-jawed at this because I, I, one, I just find it fascinating that, you [00:07:00] know, you’re out there, women being women is just too much of an effort to deal with.

Bonnie: Come on. Like, you know? We live in these bodies. We know all the frustrations … occur, trust me. But also, I’m really surprised by the, the philan- excuse me. Um, I’m really surprised by the philanthropic number you give, gave there because, you know, I feel like I see, do see a lot about breast cancer research and things that are more specific to women.

Though I know men can also get breast cancer. Um, so yeah, I was… I’m, I’m kind of just sh- surprised and glad you’re out there doing everything that you can to change those numbers. Since you brought it up, I should point out that you hit the nail on the head. You do see a lot about breast cancer research.

Michael: That’s one of the few things in women’s health that gets a lot of attention and a lot of dollars. And it’s funny because those dollars and those research dollars over the last decade have significantly improved the quality of [00:08:00] care that we get when we have breast cancer. We see, we see survival rates going up.

We see, you know, uh, less invasive or, and, and better treatments now, uh, than we have before. So we have women that are unfortunately on this journey having a much better experience than they had in the past, and that’s all due to the fact that you see breast cancer research dollars being enacted. And if we did that with other things like, you know, uh, endometriosis or heart disease or lung cancer, which kills more women than breast cancer and, and ovarian cancer combined, um, we, we would see significant re- we would see similar results, which would be a significant improvement in quality of care for them.

Bonnie: Yeah. So taking a bit of a shift here, uh, I’d like to know what brought you to McGhee in the first place. Um, obviously you are not a woman yourself. And it is somewhat [00:09:00] uncommon to have men that are such ardent advocates for women’s health. Um, so what, what brought you to this role in the first place? Well, you know, it’s interesting you ask that question and, and I’m not a woman, but I have two daughters and a wife, and so, you know, I’ve become this advocate for women’s health.

Michael: But really and truly, that’s not initially what brought me here. What initially brought me here, uh, I was doing turnarounds for private equity companies and so, and during that- Six or seven-year period when I was doing that, two of my best friends had passed away from cancer, and I really was feeling like I needed to do more with my talents.

I needed to do something that was gonna benefit humanity. And at the same time, the board of the research institute wanted to expand the scope of the research institute. We were the first in this country. We were 30 years old, but we had no voice. We had no brand. We had no ability to reach out into public markets and really make an impact.

We were doing [00:10:00] incredible science, but that science was often getting wasted on shelves somewhere. It wasn’t getting implemented, uh, to its full. So they reached out to me and said, “Hey, we, we need somebody that can help us really create an impact nationwide and internationally with the research that we know is leading the world right now, but it’s not getting out there, and it doesn’t have the voice it needs to have.”

At the same time, I was going through this sort of understanding that I needed to be doing more, and it wasn’t necessarily m- women’s health. It was just humanity that I wanted to be better supporting and better contributing to. And, and, and now that I’m here, and, and I’ve been here for seven years, and understanding the needs of, of women’s health and the importance it has on population health, on the future of society.

You know, we always laugh. You know, women are 51% of the workforce. They’re 52% of the population. They, uh, control 60% of the wealth in this country. [00:11:00] They make 82% of the buying decisions when it comes to healthcare for the family, but they give birth to 100% of the future. So if we’re not investing in women’s health, we’re not investing in our future as a society, and I’ve learned that by being here and supporting these amazing doctors and researchers that are trying to make a difference worldwide.

Bonnie: So I couldn’t be happier to be in this role supporting women’s health on, on an international scale. Well, um, I personally am really glad you are, and I’m sure a lot of other people are as well. Um, kind of one of the… We kind of touched on this on our panel, so I kind of wanted to bring it up again, is that a, a challenge that isn’t necessarily unique to healthcare is building trust in communities that have been marginalized and, in some cases, outright ignored in the past.

Um, it takes a lot more than saying, [00:12:00] “Hey, trust us. We’re all good now, right?” You know, to win the support of these groups of people. So how do you recommend, you know, on a broader scale, companies, organizations, and even individuals go about breaking down these barriers to create a more inclusive community in general, whatever field you’re in?

Michael: So I think you’ll be shocked at how simple I think it is. I think we need to listen. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. When you talk about individuals, we can have conversations. We boil it down to the individual level. I think it’s very easy for us to understand both sides of a story or, or, or what the other person wants or needs out of the relationship.

But when you start to pile on top of that communities and, and industry and, and businesses, there, there begins to get some sort of complexity or the signal gets lost as it goes up. Mm-hmm. Uh, but, but the reality is if we boil it back down to that individual level, if we go into those [00:13:00] communities and we listen and we learn and we engage those communities in building the solutions with us, we don’t go in and we, we don’t build solutions for communities, we build solutions with.

We don’t hand down solutions to them. We understand what their needs are, and then we work together with them to try and accomplish whatever it is that they’re trying to accomplish to meet those needs, right? And there’s a lot of times a little back and forth that goes into those relationships that makes the product better.

And so I think for us, that’s what we’ve done. I, I tour the country speaking on women’s health, but every time I get an opportunity to speak to a group that cares about women’s health, I also take that opportunity to listen to what their needs are, because they’re different throughout the country. And each community has a different set of needs and a different set of understanding, and you don’t go into marginalized community and give them solutions.

Go in and listen to what they need, and try and understand where they’re coming from, and try and [00:14:00] understand how to connect the dots that have been missed over the years. And, you know, to your point, they’ve heard this before. Uh, people have come and gone before. They g- I’ve heard this directly from them.

You know, “People have been here w- asking the same questions, and then we never see them again.” Uh, so I think you have to take action on those conversations. Even if that action is small, you need to get small wins with those communities and build trust together, and then move forward as a team. I think that’s the way to do it.

Bonnie: That’s, that’s what we’re trying to build. Yeah. I, I do, uh, work with accounting firms in some cases on, you know, diversity surveys and things like that, and that’s one of the things I always tell them from the beginning. I’m like, “I- we don’t wanna go any further in this conversation unless we have a plan for how we’re going to use this data.”

And we’re not gonna be able to respond to every single comment or anything like that, but to ask people to give you information, [00:15:00] to make themselves vulnerable and all of this, and then they never hear anything from it, that, that just kind of creates, I don’t know, I think in some ways it kind of ruins that relationship, you know?

Michael: I agree. I agree with you. Think about your… You wouldn’t do that to a friend of yours. You wouldn’t, you know, they… So, so why do it to that community, right? And I think if we go back to the basics of building relationships one person at a time, we’ll figure out how to talk to each different groups. Mm-hmm.

Bonnie: So kind of building on that idea, I do a lot of reading, um, and see story after story about women and people of color particularly not getting the level of healthcare that they deserve. Um, in fact, I was reading an article recently put out by Duke Health that said, and I’m gonna quote it here, “Studies, s- studies…”

Hold on.[00:16:00]

Uh. I, I’m sorry. I, I, I’m missing a couple words in my quote here, so I’m trying to figure it out. Um Studies that discuss women’s perceptions of gender bias are correct. Compared to male patients, women who present with the same condition may not receive the same evidence-based care, leading to poor outcomes.

It gets even worse for people of color, who receive fewer cardiovascular interventions, are less likely to be prescribed pain meds, and are less likely to receive chemotherapy and radiation therapy for cancer. Um, case in point, Black women have a 40% higher death rate from breast cancer than white women do.

Um, hopefully your numbers are better on that. But what advice do you have for [00:17:00] women and people of color about advocating for their own healthcare and being taken seriously? Well, first thing I’ll tell them is don’t give up, right? Because it’s your health that gets affected by it or impacted by it if you do.

Michael: Uh, keep going to the healthcare system, even if it’s imperfect, and, and help us be, be the voice that you need to be. Help us change that system. Help us make it better. I know we’re working on it, uh, as a healthcare system. I know healthcare systems all across the country are working on it, but we can’t do it alone.

We need to have your input, so we can’t have you associate, uh, or, or di- disassociate yourself with healthcare. We can’t have you not going to your appointments because then you won’t get the quality care that you deserve and, and you will have worse outcomes. So first of all, stay with the program, right?

Stay with the system and, and, and help, uh, communicate to your doctor. You know, [00:18:00] it’s, it’s one of those things where we try and make a lot of progress at the system level about how we care for people, but healthcare is delivered by and to humans, and humans are imperfect. And so you may have to do a little bit more or a little bit less to encourage your provider to treat you the way you wanna be treated.

So make sure that you have a voice when you go in there. I know we’re working on it at the system level, but we also have to work on it at the individual level, and that puts a little bit of the onus on the patient themselves to communicate what they need from the system. Uh, and, and, and not be afraid to ask questions and not be afraid to seek second opinion.

Uh, and, and you know your body better than anybody. You’re the expert of your body, so don’t take an answer that you don’t believe in and run with it. Make sure you get what you need out of the system. I know that, you know, I know that’s frustrating at times, but you’re [00:19:00] the only one that’s impacted by it if you don’t, right?

Bonnie: So let’s make sure that you’re just not taking answers, um, for granted and that, and that you’re, you’re, you’re maybe digging a little deeper when you need to And I would say too, as somebody who spent a lot of time in the healthcare system having an autoimmune disease and such, like I like the point of don’t be afraid to get a second opinion.

Because- Mm-hmm … there for years, and I was in my 20s, but I have Crohn’s disease, and for years I was misdiagnosed, and kind of patted on the head sometimes and said, “Oh, it’s just menstrual cramps. Oh, it’s just this” and you’re like, “Wait a minute.” I know, and you know, in my 20s I was, you know, not the brightest and so I just kinda took that information, and finally, uh, eventually saw a doctor who did diagnose me correctly.

Michael: But yeah, sometimes it’s frustrating and you just have to kind of plow through and say, “No, no, no, listen to me. This is what I’m experiencing.” Um- And you’re not alone in that, in that [00:20:00] struggle. I mean, we hear from women all the time about their struggles. I just read a book recently called It’s All In Our Head.

Uh, I, I encourage you to read the book if you like to read. It talks about the history of women’s healthcare and how it got to the point where it, it is now, and what’s been done over the years that haven’t, have, have not had any evidence base, have, have not been correct, but it’s been done anyway in the m- you know, kind of in the name of healthcare.

Bonnie: And it’ll really make you angry. Yeah. I, I, I may or may not be a good candidate for that book. It might get thrown across the room at some point. It made me angry, I know that. Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure. Well, is there anything else that you would just want to share with the audience? Any way that we can support you, um, and the work that you’re doing?

Michael: And then we’ll close with a couple of just kind of fun, silly questions. Sure. Uh, you know, y- yes, you can support women’s health in your [00:21:00] community. Uh, you could support women’s initiatives. I mean, we’re, we’re launching national campaigns to create awareness around what we’re doing in women’s health. So I would love for you to engage with us on social media.

McGewomens.org is our website. Uh, we have all the social handles on there that you can engage with us on your choice of social media platforms. I know there’s more popping up daily, so I don’t know which ones your, your audience will choose to use. But stay part of the conversation, be in the know, and that, that will help Yeah, and we’ll include links to, um, all the, the, the website and various other things in the show notes as well.

So, um, just for fun, I always kind of like to close with a few light questions. So Michael, when you were five years old, what did you wanna be when you grew up? Well, there’s no question. I wanted to be a football player. I mean, I, you know, if I could’ve been a quarterback in the NFL, that would’ve been my dream job.

If not a quarterback in the [00:22:00] NFL, then the CEO of Magee-Womens Research Institute. Ah, there you go. Well, that’s good. Now who’s your team? Well, I’m in Pittsburgh, so we’re, you know, we’re, we’re the- Ah, um, yeah, that’s true. We’re very happy. We just got Russell Wilson, so we’re hoping that that, that helps give us a shot in the arm offensively.

Bonnie: There you go. And if you were given a chance to travel anywhere, you didn’t have to worry about cost or taking time off or anything like that, where would you go and why? Oh, well, the Amalfi Coast. First, because I think it’s absolutely s- you know, beautiful. And secondly, because I like to eat, and, uh, I think the food…

Michael: I’ve heard that the food there is very good. So I think that’s where I’d head. That is absolutely on my list, hoping to get there in the next few years. I’ve been, uh, I’ve been as far south as Rome, but not further south than that. So it sounds- You’ll have to let me know how it is if you get there before I do.

Yeah. Well, and you do the same. I will. [00:23:00] And finally, if you could have one superpower, what would it be? Well, first of all, I, I’d probably be challenged to pick just one. I, you know, I, I like to think sometimes I, I could wear a cape and fly around the world, but then again, I’m afraid of heights, so I’m not sure how well- But I mean, I think if I could fly, that would be, that would be my superpower.

Bonnie: I would like to be able to fly. Get from point A to point B much more efficiently. Yeah, especially, I mean, with me in Atlanta and you in Pittsburgh, traffic becomes an issue on the getting from A to point B. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So I totally understand that. Well, thank you so much for being here today and educating us about what is going on in women’s healthcare, and particularly Magee.

And, uh, I can’t thank you enough for sharing that information. Well, I hope you have a great week, and I appreciate you having me. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you.

 

 

Posted on October 28, 2026