On Wednesday 23 November 2022, the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group (APHG) and Policy Connect Health held a roundtable discussion in Parliament to explore how the Women’s Health Strategy interacts with other policy and legislation to improve access, experience, and outcomes for women.

Speakers: 

• Professor Dame Lesley Regan, England’s Women’s Health Ambassador
• Baroness Merron, Shadow Minister for Health and Social Care
• Professor Charlotte McArdle,  Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for Patient Safety and Improvement
• Kate Lancaster,  Chief Executive, Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists
• Lucy Hocking, Senior Analyst RAND Europe- (BRACE Women’s health hubs evaluation team)
• Paul Holmes,  Market Access Director, Hologic UK & Ireland

Earlier this year the government outlined its plan for women’s health following the release of England’s first ever Women’s Health Strategy and its appointment of England’s first Women’s health ambassador Professor Dame Lesley Regan. This came after the Department of Health and Social Care launched a call for evidence in March 2021 to inform this strategy with over 100,000 responses.

This strategy follows several independent inquiries into women’s health services, including the report of the independent medicines and medical devices safety review by Ian Paterson, which found that healthcare systems fail to keep women safe and fail to listen to them. 

While women in the UK on average live longer than men, women spend a greater proportion of their lives in ill health and disability, and there are growing geographic differences in women’s life expectancy. Research has also shown that there are disparities between different groups of women in terms of access to services, experiences of healthcare, and health outcomes.

Our event brought together parliamentarians, healthcare professionals, Royal Colleges, industry, research, charities with the aim of understanding how the strategy interacts with other policy and legislation to improve access, experience, and outcomes for women and how the recently published women’s health strategy can forever shift the trajectory for women’s health in the UK.