Women may live longer but they also live in poor health for 25 percent more of their lives than men do, a new report has found.
The report, published by the World Economic Forum in partnership with the McKinsey Health Institute, found one third of the women’s health gap can be attributed to nine conditions that affect women disproportionately or differently than men, including ischemic heart disease, cervical cancer, breast cancer, maternal hypertensive disorder and postpartum hemorrhage.
These conditions tend to limit a woman’s life span, leading to early death.
Other conditions that can result in women living more years in poor health include menopause, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), migraine and endometriosis.
According to the report, closing the health gap could add an extra seven health days per year for a woman. It could also yield up to 75 million disability-adjusted life years annually and boost the global economy by US$400 billion by 2040.
“Examining these conditions highlights potential opportunities for immediate progress and actions needed to close the women’s health gap over time,” the report stated.
Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of mortality for women globally, causing the deaths of more than four million women each year. Women are more likely than men to die from an acute cardiovascular event, such as a hearth attack. According to the report, closing the cardiovascular disease gap in the US alone could allow women to regain a combined 1.6 million years of life, as well as add US$28 billion to the country’s economy by 2040.
Alarmingly, for the conditions affecting health span—migraine, PMS, endometriosis, and menopause—more than half of the studied countries in the report did not have clinical practice guidelines describing the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of the conditions. This, despite menopause affecting most women globally at some point in their lifetimes and PMS affecting up to 40 percent of women of reproductive age.
The authors of the report listed a range of strategies to close the women’s health gap, including improving the standardisation of sex- and gender-based data collection to increase understanding of women’s health, conducting more research that focuses on conditions specific to women, adopting clinical practice guidelines that align with accepted evidence for sex- and gender-based care and including as many women as possible in health initiatives which promote health equity and inclusion.
“Addressing health disparities could have a greater impact on mortality for conditions affecting life span than any single treatment studied in recent clinical trials,” the report stated.
Investing in women by directing resources towards women’s health beyond the bedside is another strategy recommended by the report to accelerate progress and help overhaul a healthcare delivery system that is “underserving” women.
“These efforts can, and will, reach far beyond the lives of individual women,“ the report said. “Investors, researchers, academics, nonprofits, providers, life sciences companies, and governments have reasons to improve the health of women.”
“Healthier women are cornerstones of strong families, prosperous communities, vibrant workplaces, and resilient economies.”
The report highlighted the effectiveness of the Women’s Health Impact Tracking (WHIT) platform, which can be used to measure the burden of health conditions that contribute to the gender health gap (regarding disability, mortality, and consequent economic effect), treatment effectiveness and appropriateness of care delivery.
Researchers hope the tracker is the first step towards creating a path to make relevant data available to stakeholders, eventually expanding globally to analyse the conditions that contribute to most of the gender health gap.
“Closing the gap requires collaboration, investment, and commitment to transforming health and social systems for the betterment of society,” the report concluded.
“Now is the time to make a difference and expand the number of champions driving the agenda across the public, private, and social sectors to close the women’s health gap.”