Evaluation of gender progress in health economics

The [w]Health Healthcare and Life Sciences Index just released its first cross-sector benchmark on women's health equity — and the numbers are sobering. Only 38% of healthcare and life sciences organizations have reached mature stages of action. Progress is strongest in advocacy and education. It is weakest precisely where it matters most: inclusive research design, women-centric care pathways, and data integration. Three structural gaps stand out for policymakers: The R&D gap is a regulatory failure as much as a market one. Only 36% of organizations design research with explicit sex or gender criteria. Fewer than 15% of pharma companies adjust dosing or formulation to reflect biological differences. This isn't just an industry problem — it reflects the absence of regulatory requirements that make inclusion the default, not the exception. Payors hold an underused policy lever. With fewer than 1 in 5 payors integrating sex-specific considerations into benefit design or formularies, coverage architecture is actively perpetuating the gap. Reimbursement reform is a public policy instrument, not just a commercial one. Data governance is the missing infrastructure. Only 38% of organizations collect gender-disaggregated data systematically. Without mandated sex-disaggregated reporting standards, individual commitments remain fragmented and unmeasurable. The WEF estimates closing the gender health gap could add $1 trillion to global GDP by 2040. The case isn't just moral — it's fiscal. The shift required is from awareness to accountability: embedding sex and gender as design principles across R&D, care delivery, and investment — not as side initiatives, but as governance requirements.

Where do we stand in the effort to close the women’s health gap? The new Women’s Health Impact Tracking (WHIT) Platform, developed by the World Economic Forum and the McKinsey & Company Health Institute, is an important way to track that. It brings together a clear set of indicators to help researchers, clinicians, policy leaders, and advocates understand where we are and what still needs to be done. The platform looks at three critical areas: 💊 The #efficacy gap, which reflects how well treatments work for women compared to men. Today, only 12 percent of clinical trials publish sex-disaggregated data, making it harder to evaluate effectiveness of drugs and treatments in women. 🏥 The #care #delivery gap, which measures how consistently women receive timely, quality care. For example, currently, only 37 percent of women on average are screened for cervical cancer. 📉 The #data gap, which highlights where we lack reliable information altogether. The estimated prevalence of endometriosis and menopause symptoms is undercounted by up to 90 percent, meaning we may be missing the true scope of these burdens. They reveal where progress is still needed and highlight the structural gaps that continue to shape women’s health outcomes. This kind of shared measurement is also essential if we are serious about realizing the full potential of women’s health, both in terms of better lives and stronger economies. By closing these gaps, we are not just addressing long-standing inequities. We are also opening the door to significant health gains and substantial global economic growth. At GSD Health Research, we are working with partners to advance women’s health through flexible trial design, better data, and scalable research tools—the kinds of approaches that help accelerate progress like what this platform is tracking. Grateful to the teams behind this platform. This is the kind of resource that can help turn momentum into measurable progress. Explore the platform: https://lnkd.in/dAsr65Q4 ( 🔗 in comments) #WomensHealth #HealthEquity #WomensHealthResearch #WHIT #ClinicalTrials #DataGaps

NEWS: World Economic Forum, Davos, 17 Jan 2024 “A new WEF report released today shows that closing the gender health gap would allow more women to live healthier, higher-quality lives, and provide an unprecedented boost to the global economy. The report, developed in collaboration with the McKinsey Health Institute, analyses the health conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women and quantifies the health gap today and the potential economic boon of bridging it tomorrow. Addressing shortcomings - which limit the ability of many women to engage in the workforce and earn a living for themselves and their families - could reduce the time women spend in poor health by almost two-thirds, improve the health outcomes and daily lives of over 3.9 billion people, and add $1 trillion to the economy annually by 2040. “Our analysis demonstrates that addressing the women's health gap and investing in women's health must be a priority for every country," said Shyam Bishen, of WEF. “Beyond improving women's quality of life, ensuring women have access to innovations in healthcare is one of the best investments that countries can make for their societies and their economies." Critically, better health is correlated with economic prosperity. According to the report, women on average spend 25% more of their life in poor health than men. Closing the health gap facing women globally could lead to a 1.7% increase in per capita GDP, with every $1 invested in these efforts potentially unlocking $3 in economic growth. It urges for greater access to gender-specific care and calls on industry leaders to create new financing models and innovative business policies, with broad multi-sector collaboration highlighted as a crucial step towards achieving these goals. “The disparities that women face in accessing and receiving quality healthcare are not only inequitable - they are unjust. Investing in women's health doesn't just yield better outcomes for women, but it is also a direct investment in families, communities, societies and economies," said Anita Zaidi, of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “Closing the gender health gap must be an urgent priority for every country: our collective future depends on it."

Breakthroughs in Women’s Health! I. Women’s health: a systemic blind spot 1. Women’s health is still treated as niche despite affecting half the population 2. Delayed diagnoses, limited access, and underinvestment lead to preventable harm 3. The global economic cost of this gap is estimated at $1 trillion annually II. Scientific momentum shows the gap is solvable 1. Recent advances include sex‑specific medicines and vaccines, affordable maternal interventions, and digital tools for earlier detection 2. Applications of AI now support cancer screening and pregnancy risk prediction 3. These breakthroughs prove equity is within reach III. Sex-specific biology is reshaping medicine 1. New findings explain differences in skin cancer risk linked to estrogen levels 2. Estrogens show protective effects against kidney damage 3. Genetic insights into depression highlight the need for sex‑disaggregated research and care IV. Access, affordability, and adoption determine impact 1. Scientific progress delivers value only when women can use it 2. Financing, primary care reach, and informed choice convert innovation into outcomes 3. The difference between invention and impact is implementation V. Decentralized, stigma-aware care expands reach 1. Low‑cost near‑patient diagnostics bring testing closer to women 2. Self‑sampling reduces stigma and increases screening uptake 3. Simple digital feedback makes results timely and actionable. VI. Strong health systems make the difference 1. Universal, prevention‑focused systems enable longer, healthier lives for women 2. Sex‑disaggregated data supports accountability and learning 3. Technology amplifies resilient systems but cannot replace them VII. Europe shows what is possible 1. Europe combines world‑leading research with robust, universal healthcare 2. Women live longer and maintain independence for more years 3. Treating women’s health as social and economic infrastructure delivers shared prosperity Great panel at World Economic Forum with Orazio Schillaci, Sania Nishtar, Severin Schwan, Gargee Ghosh, Nadia Calviñoño moderated by Magdalena Skipperh. https://lnkd.in/eqRP547e _____ Stay Ahead of Transformative Innovation Follow The Futuring Alliance for regular insights, foresight, and practical tools to help your organization thrive in times of change. We support leaders across industries in turning future-focused ideas into real-world impact—through collaboration, innovation, and bold action. Let’s shape what’s next—together. #healthcare #womenshealth #innovation #transfomativeinnovation #systems #systemschange #policy #wef26

Health programs operate within deeply gendered realities, where social norms, power structures, and systemic inequalities shape access to care and health outcomes. Yet, monitoring and evaluation frameworks often struggle to capture these complexities, reducing gender to a secondary consideration rather than an integral part of program assessment. This document provides a structured, evidence-driven approach to embedding gender within M&E processes, ensuring that health interventions are both equitable and impactful. Through a series of targeted modules, practical exercises, and analytical tools, this resource enables practitioners to assess gender disparities, refine indicators, and incorporate gender-sensitive methodologies at every stage of evaluation. It moves beyond basic sex-disaggregated data collection, guiding professionals in identifying patterns of exclusion, power imbalances, and the unintended consequences of health programs. Designed with usability in mind, it offers clear, actionable frameworks that support both new and experienced M&E professionals in applying a gender lens to program assessment and decision-making. Bridging theory with practice, this document responds to a pressing need in global health: the ability to measure not just program outputs, but the deeper social shifts required for transformative change. It speaks to those who recognize that monitoring and evaluation are not just technical exercises, but ethical imperatives—tools for ensuring that health systems respond to the needs of all people, regardless of gender.

World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the McKinsey Health Institute, presents a distinctive report that underscores the economic and societal potential of closing the women’s health gap and tracks the progress towards doing so using novel metrics and insights. The report introduces the Women’s Health Impact Tracking (WHIT) platform, a pioneering tool to measure and track #healthgaps for women. It emphasizes five key actions: ▶️ Count women - Measure women’s health and health outcomes globally ▶️ Study women - Understand #hormonalhealth and women’s biology ▶️ Care for women - Implement clinical practice guidelines for women-specific conditions and account for sex-specific differences within CPGs ▶️ Include all women - Develop accessible solutions to enable early intervention and treatment for women around the world ▶️ Invest in women - Boost comprehensive financing for women’s health research and interventions.  Closing the women’s health gap could yield 75 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) annually – the equivalent of adding seven healthy days per year per woman – and unlock $1 trillion in annual global GDP by 2040. Now is the time for stakeholders to address the drivers of the gap and improve the lives of women, communities and economies around the world. #healthequity #healthcareforall #womenshealth

Closing the women's health gap unlocks $400 billion in annual GDP. The productivity equivalent of 137 million women moving into full-time work by 2040. Every dollar invested returns three in economic growth. The mechanism: women spend 25% more years in poor health than men. Nine conditions drive roughly a third of the total gap: endometriosis, menopause, migraine, PMS, ischaemic heart disease, maternal hypertensive disorder, breast and cervical cancer, postpartum hemorrhage. For corporate benefits leaders, the implication is specific. Menopause alone drives attrition in the 45–55 tenure band, the most expensive cohort to replace on the org chart. The next generation of wellness stacks will be condition-specific, gender-aware, and P&L-connected. Generic "women's wellness month" programming is not that.

I grew up being told that science could change the world. But the more I know about this field, the more I see how the world hasn’t changed enough for women in science! Seeing women thrive in STEM is my powerful source of inspiration. & today that inspiration comes from Professor Neena Gupta, who was just awarded the prestigious Infosys Prize 2024 in Mathematical Sciences for her work on the Zariski Cancellation Problem; a puzzle that has eluded mathematicians for 70 years!! This reflects the brilliance that women bring to scientific inquiry. In a field where women have had to scream to be heard, Neena maam's recognition is a huge victory. But it also reminded me of the countless women whose names history forgot: ●Rosalind Franklin proved DNA’s structure, but her data was stolen. ●Barbara McClintock was dismissed as a “crazy woman” until her revolutionary genetics research could no longer be ignored. ●Lise Meitner, who co-discovered nuclear fission, was erased from history when the Nobel was awarded to her male colleague. & today their shadows still remains in a system that undervalues, underfunds & underappreciates women. There is something even more painful, I wish more people would care about: WOMEN'S HEALTH Yesterday I attended the International Conference on Reproductive Sciences & Molecular Medicine at my college, where researchers from worldwide presented their findings. One of the presentations about Gender Health gap shook me to the core! According to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 report, gender health gap is a silent epidemic that we've all been ignoring: ●Women spend a significant part of their lives battling chronic conditions, often undiagnosed. ●75 million years of healthy life are stolen from women every single year. Imagine if we gave those years back if we allowed 3.9 billion women to live just 500 days healthier, freer from pain. ●$1 invested in women’s health would return $3 in economic growth & yet, we choose to ignore this, choosing profits over people. ●Closing the women’s health gap could add $1 trillion to the global economy by 2040. Autoimmune disorders, ADHD & cardiovascular diseases are more common in women. Yet cardiovascular diseases are still called "man's disease". Even endometriosis, a condition that affects 1 in 10 women, takes an average of 7-10 years to diagnose. The cruelest irony is most diagnostic tools & treatments are tailored to male physiology. For many years, studies primarily focused on male patients, leading to a lack of understanding of how these disease manifests in women. Symptoms in women can be different from those in men & women are often diagnosed later, leading to a perception that such condition affecting mainly men. Let’s not just applaud women when they win prizes. Instead let’s build a world where they don’t have to fight for the right to be at the table. Because if we truly want to change the world, we must start by changing the way we see & treat its women.

🌟 New Publication Alert! ✍️ Thrilled to share our latest work , "Value is Gendered: The Need for Sex and Gender Considerations in Health Economic Evaluations," now published in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy! As countries strive to achieve Universal Health Coverage (#UHC), health economic evaluations play a crucial role in informing decisions about which interventions to fund. However, our paper underscores an often-overlooked dimension: the influence of sex and gender on value assessments in health economics. Health needs, care-seeking behaviours, and treatment outcomes are not the same for men and women, yet traditional health economic evaluations often fail to account for these differences. This oversight risks perpetuating inequities in healthcare access and outcomes, contrary to the core principles of #UHC, which seek to ensure equitable access to essential services without financial hardship. Our paper highlights the importance of integrating sex and gender considerations into health economic analyses to: ✅ Ensure more accurate assessments of intervention value. ✅ Better address the diverse needs of populations. ✅ Promote equity in health resource allocation. The journey toward #UHC cannot succeed without acknowledging and addressing gender disparities in healthcare. We hope this work inspires policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to prioritize gender-responsive approaches in health financing and economic evaluations. 📚 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eyhe5fsE #HealthEconomics #UniversalHealthCoverage #GenderEquity #HealthPolicy #GlobalHealth Feeling so grateful to have worked with these three amazing women; Michelle Remme Lavanya Vijayasingham and Rajalakshmi RamPrakash. I learned so much from each of you during the writing process. It was such a rewarding experience!