Women’s health research is in need of urgent reform, with top organisations releasing a new report outlining necessary global policy changes.
Women live, on average, five years longer than men, and yet they spend 25 per cent of their lives in poor health or with some degree of disability. Addressing this burden could improve the length and quality of life for millions of women, while also boosting the global economy by at least $1 trillion annually by 2040, according to the report.
Global consultancy Kearney and the World Economic Forum’s Global Alliance for Women’s Health, supported by the Gates Foundation, have published a policy blueprint with five core changes, including regulatory and financial reform, to address the chronic underinvestment in women’s health and a lack of focus on women in clinical research.
“For too many women, healthcare still means misdiagnoses, delayed treatment, and hitting dead ends. I’ve been there—waiting months for answers, being passed between specialists, and feeling invisible in the system before a doctor finally looked at me as a woman, not just as a patient. Only then did I start to get answers,” said Paula Bellostas Muguerza, global lead of Kearney’s Healthcare and Life Sciences practice.
“These aren’t isolated experiences, and they reflect systems that were never built with women in mind.”
“This report sets out five policy areas that can begin to change that—from adapting how we fund research to rethinking how we design trials and define evidence. We know this kind of change is possible. We’ve seen it in rare diseases and pediatrics, where targeted incentives have transformed outcomes. Now, we need to bring that same ambition to women’s health.”
Although women represent half of the global population, only 7 per cent of healthcare research funding goes toward conditions that exclusively affect them.
Also concerning, only 5 per cent of available medications have been properly tested, monitored and labeled for safe use during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Five policy changes
Called Prescription for Change: Policy Recommendations for Women’s Health Research, the report calls for clinical guidelines, drug labeling, and patient information to be updated to reflect sex-specific differences in safety, efficacy, and dosing.
It also says these updates should be based on sex-disaggregated trial data and form a standard part of regulatory approval. This is because currently, sex-disaggregated data is not necessarily reported often, with only 7 per cent of migraine trials and 17 per cent of ischaemic heart disease trials doing so.
The report recommends unlocking innovation in women’s health by implementing regulatory changes, tax credits, targeted research grants, and matched public–private funding to close investment gaps, alongside the adoption of a new pricing and reimbursement value proposition to accelerate research and the development of new treatments.
Testing more women in clinical trials is another vital piece to the puzzle, with the report calling for mandatory sex, age, and race representation in clinical trials, matching enrollment in a trial with the actual real-world disease burden.
The report also makes clear the need for standardising terminology and data collection in order to look at individual categories of clinical trial participants, as well as a shift towards more inclusive trial strategies such as tailored recruitment and community-based approaches.
Finally, the report calls for clinical guidelines, drug labeling, and patient information to be updated to reflect sex-specific differences in safety, efficacy, and dosing.
“It is increasingly recognised that medical care must be personalized for women, addressing the specific health issues they face,” said Shyam Bishen, head of the Centre for Health and Healthcare at the World Economic Forum.
“This begins with inclusive research practices. Failing to study women adequately affects everyone.”
“The policy recommendations we are advocating are central to enabling more breakthrough treatments and better prevention strategies, which will positively impact lives and are essential to global development.”