H E A L T H I N S I G H T S
Global consultancy, Kearney, and the World Economic Forum’ s Global Alliance for Women’ s Health, supported by the Gates Foundation, have published an urgent call for a worldwide reform of women’ s health research. The new policy blueprint calls for five core policy 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.
The data speaks for itself, although women represent half the global population, only 7 % of healthcare research funding goes toward conditions that exclusively affect them. Even more concerning, just 5 % of available medications have been properly tested, monitored and labelled for safe use during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
The report and call for policy change, Prescription for Change: Policy recommendations for women’ s health research, offers five recommendations:
1. Unlock innovation in women’ s health
The report recommends a combination of regulatory, financial and pricing incentives to make women’ s health R & D commercially viable. These include 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.
2. Test more women in clinical trials
An urgent call for the reform of women’ s health research has been published by a Global Consultancy, World Economic Forum’ s Global Alliance for Women’ s Health, supported by the Gates Foundation. Healthcare experts, Paula Bellostas Muguerza, Shyam Bishen and Sanjana Bhardwaj discuss the chronic underinvestment in women’ s health and a lack of focus on women in clinical research.
The report calls for mandatory sex, age and race representation in clinical trials, matching enrollment in a trial with the actual real-world disease burden. This includes a maternal investigation plan backed by financial incentives and clear requirements for pregnant and lactating women to be safely included in trials.
3. Separate out clear categories in clinical trial data
The report makes clear the need for standardising terminology and data collection in order to look at individual categories of clinical trial participants. This requires comprehensive sex-specific benefit – risk assessments to provide better identification of unique sex-specific affects rather than losing
IT’ S TIME TO REFORM WOMEN’ S HEALTH RESEARCH, ACCORDING TO NEW REPORT BY KEARNEY AND THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
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