News
Women’s health among the UK government’s priorities in 2024
The government is looking to improve care for menstrual and gynaecological conditions and expand women’s health hubs
The UK’s health secretary has named menstrual and gynaecological conditions and women’s health research among the government’s priorities in 2024.
Speaking at the Women’s Health Summit in London to mark the second year of the Women’s Health Strategy for England, Victoria Atkins said it would also prioritise improving maternity care and support for mothers who suffer birth trauma.
“We’re breaking historical barriers that prevent women getting the care they need, building greater understanding of women’s healthcare issues and ensuring their voices are listened to,” she said.
“We’ve made huge progress – enabling almost half a million women access to cheaper HRT, supporting women through the agony of pregnancy loss and opening new women’s health hubs – but I absolutely recognise there is more to do.
“We’re ensuring these changes benefit all women, regardless of socioeconomic background or ethnicity, because our Women’s Health Strategy is only a success if it works for all women.”
The 2024 priorities were developed from responses to the government’s call for evidence from over 100,000 healthcare professionals, women’s health champions, members of the public and other stakeholders across the health sector.
They aim to offer better care for menstrual and gynaecological conditions , expand women’s health hubs, tackle disparities and improve support for vulnerable women, bolster maternity care and accelerate research.
“Helping women and girls who suffer from bad periods can make a huge difference to their lives, education and careers. And any woman who has experienced trauma after giving birth – either mentally or physically – will know the impact it can have on all aspects of her life,” said Minister for Women’s Health, Maria Caulfield.
“These are issues that impact women but they should not be seen as ‘women’s problems’ – it is an everyone problem. We are doing more to put these issues on the agenda and keep them there, to close the gender health gap once and for all.
“We’ve made enormous strides in the first year of the strategy and I’m excited to see what 2024 will bring.”
As well as announcing its new priorities, the government announced the reappointment of Professor Dame Lesley Regan as women’s health ambassador for England for a further two years.
Professor Dame Lesley was appointed as the women’s health ambassador in 2022 and brings a raft of expertise spanning a 44-year career in women’s health as a practising clinician.
Speaking at the summit, she said: “Our Women’s Health Strategy is ambitious. It was created to ensure our healthcare system places women’s health on an equal footing to men.
“I want women everywhere to feel confident that when they seek advice from their healthcare professional, whether it’s for heavy or painful periods or issues following birth, they know they are going to receive world-class treatment.
“This is the ultimate goal of the strategy, and I am delighted that we have made such positive progress in the first year and generated so much enthusiastic help to succeed.”
She added: “This coming year offers us the opportunity of taking further steps forward in delivering better healthcare outcomes for every woman in our society.”
Emma Cox, CEO of Endometriosis UK, said: “Women’s health has long been an underfunded and under-researched area.
“Implementing the aspirations in the Women’s Health Strategy will provide a much needed boost to turning this around, improving treatment and the lives of those suffering from endometriosis and menstrual health conditions.
“At Endometriosis UK, we know that many women face an unacceptable delay in securing a diagnosis and appropriate care. With sufficient funding and support, women’s health hubs could offer a real opportunity to drive down diagnosis times and support women to access the support they need.”
Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, added: “The focus on improving care and treatment for women with gynaecological conditions, such as endometriosis and fibroids, which are often progressive, and have a huge impact on a woman’s quality of life, is hugely welcome.
“We have continually called for action to improve waiting lists in gynaecology services and know that women’s health hubs present a real opportunity to improve women’s health outcomes and reduce inequalities in access and outcomes for women across the country.
“I am also glad to see that ensuring high quality care following birth trauma, an area of care which has long been a professional and personal passion of mine, has been recognised as a key focus for government.”
Chief nursing officer for England, Ruth May, said: “The NHS is committed to ensuring women’s individual healthcare needs are met, which is why every area of England is being supported to develop a women’s health hub alongside the rollout of a network of Women’s Health Champions.
“The NHS is also rolling out dedicated pelvic health clinics and every local health system now has a specialist community perinatal mental health team, but there is clearly more to do.”
To receive the Femtech World newsletter, sign up here.
Australia’s drug advisory committee has recommended wider funding of triptorelin for women with breast cancer or endometriosis.
The recommendation comes after AstraZeneca announced plans to remove Zoladex from the market, risking leaving more than 7,500 women with breast cancer without an alternative treatment.
Both medicines block the release of oestrogen and testosterone and can be used as part of treatment, or for fertility preservation, in some forms of cancer.
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee met urgently in July and recommended making triptorelin unrestricted under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), which would mean it was funded for all uses.
The drug has been listed on the PBS for prostate cancer since 2006.
Triptorelin and Zoladex can also be used to treat endometriosis and to block puberty for either precocious puberty or gender-affirming care.
Vicki Durston, director of policy and advocacy at Breast Cancer Network Australia, described the recommendation as “a significant step forward” and said access to the medicine could mean the difference between life and death for some patients.
She said some women had already chosen to have their ovaries removed because of uncertainty over Zoladex supplies.
Marilla Druitt, Victorian state chair of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said it remained unclear whether triptorelin would work exactly the same way as Zoladex, but the recommendation was likely to be positive for patients with endometriosis and pelvic pain.
She said: “I’m glad we’ve got an alternative.”
“That’s fantastic, and it remains to be seen whether or not it will be as good, but pain is so complex, pain is a really hard thing to study because it’s got so many contributors.”
Druitt said further research would be needed after the medicine was introduced.
If accepted by the federal government, the recommendation would also allow PBS funding of triptorelin for puberty suppression in precocious puberty and gender-affirming care.
This would make gender-affirming care federally funded through the PBS for the first time and would remove a financial barrier for transgender children in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Stuart Aitken, medical director of Gender Health Australia, said the recommendation had sparked “absolute joy” among his patients.
He said: “It takes away a huge barrier to accessing evidence-based care.”
“It means that the ban has a very limited effect.”
By Women’s HealthX
As healthcare organisations navigate tightening compliance mandates, evolving reimbursement frameworks, and shifting health economics, the single most critical asset for leadership is operational visibility into what their industry counterparts are executing right now.
Ahead of the Women’s HealthX marketplace in Boston this December, a cross-functional steering committee of health plans, hospital networks, biopharma innovators, and enterprise employers has launched the definitive 2026 U.S. Health Infrastructure Survey.
The objective of this brief, multi-state index is to bypass abstract market fluff and map out exactly how the country’s elite healthcare stakeholders are practically structuring their 2027 budgets, clinical protocols, and technology procurement guidelines.
Some of the questions we are asking:
- Health Plans & Payers “What is the biggest operational barrier to expanding women’s health coverage?”
- Health Systems & Providers “What is the biggest women’s health priority for health systems over the next 24 months?”
- Pharma & Life Sciences “What is the biggest commercial hurdle facing women’s health innovation?”
- Employers & Benefits Leaders “Which women’s health challenge creates the greatest workforce impact?”
By contributing just 60 seconds of your operational insight to the index, you will ensure your specific sector’s parameters are accurately represented.
In return for your participation, you will secure a priority, pre-ordered copy of the completed 30-page intelligence report when the final data drops this September!
See where your direct peer groups are drawing their line in the sand for the upcoming fiscal year.
Contribute 60 seconds and pre-order your national benchmark report
Women’s HealthX 2026 | From Rhetoric to Results
Encore Boston Harbor | December 3-4 2026
Bypass abstract market rhetoric to evaluate real-world health economics, regulatory compliance mandates, and care delivery systems.
Join the region’s foremost health plan medical directors, hospital COOs, biopharma innovators, and enterprise benefits buyers anchoring our 2026 tracks.
Sahar Abid is a Science Associate at Ema EQ, where she works on cultural sensitivity and bias in AI.
A woman asks an AI health assistant about postpartum depression.
She mentions that her in-laws are telling her to “push through” and skip medical help, even as her symptoms get harder to manage. She never says where she is from or names her background.
The assistant describes the condition and gives her a hotline number. It sounds correct, but it misses what she needs.
That gap is more common than the industry admits, and it points to a blind spot in how we test health AI for bias.
Most bias testing looks at what people explicitly say.
The typical way to check an AI for bias is to label a prompt with someone’s demographic details and see if the answer changes. That catches some problems but misses a bigger one.
Most people do not lead with their identity. They lead with their situation. The woman above told the assistant everything it needed to help her, just not in the form of a label.
Her real question was not only “what is postpartum depression?” It was “how do I get care when the people around me don’t want me to?
When family members hold sway over health decisions, and in many communities they do, advice that asks someone to overrule their family is not something they can act on.
The AI didn’t say anything factually wrong. It answered a different question than the one she was living.
We call this culturally implicit bias, meaning the AI misses the cultural context a situation implies rather than the context a person spells out.
When systems are trained to notice only the explicit cues, they fall back on a default answer built for the majority. For everyone else, the response can feel generic, off-target, or discouraging enough that they stop looking for help.
In health, that is not small. The people most likely to be missed are often the ones the system already underserves.
What we set out to test.
At Ema, we wanted to know how well AI picks up on cultural context that is implied but never stated. So we built our own way to test for it, across a range of communities and real situations like postpartum depression and fertility, using questions that carried cultural meaning without announcing it.
The patterns were consistent. Models often missed the meaning underneath the question. They dropped the specific details a person did share and smoothed them into something generic.
And even when they pointed toward real care, they tended to offer one option instead of choices that might actually fit a person’s life. Any one of those can be the difference between someone following the advice and walking away from care.
Why this matters for anyone building health AI.
Getting this right is the right thing to do, and it also works better.
When an answer reflects a person’s real context, people trust and act on the recommendations more, so they get the help and support they need.
Testing for it is harder than the shortcut most teams use. Swapping a name or a demographic label in and out is easy. Checking whether a model actually understands the human context around a question takes more care.
The shortcut teaches models to perform cultural competence instead of practicing it. No matter how much or how little someone chooses to share, they deserve an answer that is warm, complete, and usable.
A better question.
The bar for equitable health AI should be “does it serve someone who never told you who they are?” It is the harder test, but it determines whether real people get help.
The work of getting there is far from finished, and it is exactly what we are building toward at Ema.
Sources: Naidoo, V., & Chadha, K. K. (2025), Culturally responsive AI chatbots: from framework to field evidence, Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans. Souligne, N., & Subbian, V. (2026), FairLogue: A toolkit for intersectional fairness analysis in clinical machine learning models.
Entrepreneur2 weeks agoApplications close August 18 for Women’s Health Innovation Summit 2026 Innovation Showcase
Menopause2 weeks agoThird of women unaware of perimenopause mental health impact
Fertility6 days agoChelsea FC Women to launch first-of-its-kind player fertility fund
Events2 weeks agoWomen’s Health Week Europe 2026 releases fully populated agenda ahead of October summit
Menopause1 week agoMenopausal hormone therapy may lower dementia risk, study suggests
Hormonal health2 weeks agoWe are wrapping our children in plastic and calling it care
Pregnancy2 weeks agoChemicals in plastics may be linked to high blood pressure during pregnancy
News2 weeks agoWomen with endometriosis face 46% higher risk of type 2 diabetes – study
2 Comments