What is the women’s health strategy?

The Women’s Health Strategy is a 10-year strategy that sets out a range of commitments to improve the health of women everywhere, including a plan to transform women’s health content on the NHS website, a definition of trauma-informed practice for the health sector and plans to increase female participation in vital research.

The Women’s Health Strategy is informed by the life course approach. Unlike a disease-oriented approach, which focuses on interventions for a single condition often at a single life stage, a life course approach focuses on understanding the changing health and care needs of women and girls across their lives.

It aims to identify the critical stages, transitions and settings where there are opportunities to:

• promote good health

• prevent negative health outcomes

• restore health and wellbeing

On 8 March 2021, the government launched a 14-week call for evidence to inform the development of this strategy.

The call for evidence had 3 parts:

1. A ‘Women’s Health – Let’s talk about it’ public survey, which was open to all individuals aged 16 and over in England.

2. An open invitation for individuals and organisations with expertise in women’s health to submit written evidence.

3. A focus group study with women across England, undertaken by the University of York in collaboration with the King’s Fund.

The government received 110,123 responses of which 97,307 were from individuals who said they lived in England and wanted to share their own experiences, the experiences of a female family member, friend or partner, or their reflections as a health or care professional.

The call for evidence, heard about women’s experiences at every stage of their interactions with the healthcare system – from initial discussion of symptoms to further appointments, discussion of treatment options and follow-up care.
Women said they were often not listened to or told that heavy and painful periods are ‘normal’ or that the woman will ‘grow out of them’, and many women told us about waiting years before receiving a diagnosis for conditions such as endometriosis. Women also told us about their struggles to access high-quality information on women’s health issues, such as advice on accessing the right form of contraception for them.

We also heard about the impacts that women’s health issues – such as heavy menstrual bleeding, fertility treatment or menopause – can have on women’s participation in the workplace and ability to go about their daily lives.

The findings from the call for evidence are summarised throughout this strategy, and the full findings from the public survey and written submissions can be found in full in the; call for evidence consultation response. The findings of the focus group study can be found on the University of York PREPARE website.

The Adeno Gang is delighted to inform you that we have successfully accomplished two out of the five strategies outlined in the Women's Health Strategy since its publication in 2022.