CHALLENGING HEALTH INEQUALITIES - INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2021 - #CHOOSETOCHALLENGE - PUBLIC POLICY PROJECTS
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International Women’s Day 2021
Challenging
Health
Inequalities
8th March 2021
(13.00-16.00)
Public Policy Projects
28 Queen Street,
London EC4R 1BB
E: taome.jennings@publicpolicyprojects.com T:0745425522
#ChooseToChallenge
Contents
1. What is Public Policy Projects?
2. International Women’s Day 2021
3. About this Event
a. Session 1: Reproductive Healthcare
b. Session 2: Gender, Aging & Health
c. Session 3: Racial Disparities in Women’s
Healthcare
4. Timetable and Audience
#ChooseToChallenge#ChooseToChallenge
What is Public Policy Projects?
Public Policy Projects (PPP) is a subscription-based policy institute that offers practical
policy analysis and development within the UK.
PPP is independent and cross-party, bringing together public and private sector leaders,
investors, policymakers and commentators with a common interest in producing
actionable insights for future public policy.
PPP produces reports, white papers and due diligence for local, national and regional
governments, the NHS, private and public/third sector organisations. As an institute, PPP
regularly organises webinars, roundtables, conferences and facilitates meetings with our
expert policy board including Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell, Baroness Nicola Blackwood and
Stephen Hammond MP.
What We Do
PPP is a cross-sector, global leader in healthcare, life
sciences, med-tech, social care, infrastructure and global
economics policy development. PPP produces a series of
national and international policy publications including
State of the Nation Reports, industry white papers and
due diligence advising government, public/third sector
POLICY organisations and private companies.
PPP provides policy-led news, insight and analysis to its
global audience through a series of sector specific
publications. Bringing together insights generated through
policy development and exclusive editorial features, PPP
offers its network an unparalleled perspective on the
cutting-edge developments in healthcare, infrastructure
PUBLISHING and global economics.
PPP hosts a range of physical and virtual events bringing
together experts and senior thought leaders from across the
world. Through conferences, bi-monthly breakfast meetings,
virtual breakfast webinars, seminars and roundtables, PPP
offers a forum for debate and the development of
actionable insights across a range of sectors.
EVENTSInternational Women’s Day 2021
International Women’s Day is a global day dedicated
to the celebration of women’s social, economic, cultural
and political achievements.
Celebrated annually on 8th March, International
Women’s Day focuses on:
- Celebrating women’s achievements
- Raising awareness about women’s equality
- Campaigning for accelerated gender parity
- Fundraising for female-focused charities
The campaign theme for International Women’s
Day 2021 is ‘Choose To Challenge’.
“ A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re
all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all
day, every day. We can choose to challenge and call out
gender bias, discrimination and stereotyping. We can
choose to seek out and celebrate women’s
achievements. Collectively we can create an inclusive
and more gender-equal world. From challenge comes “
change, so let’s all choose to challenge.
#ChooseToChallenge
For more information on the International Women’s Day 2021 campaign theme,
please visit internationalwomensday.com#ChooseToChallenge
About this Event
International Women’s Day:
Challenging Health Inequalities
From challenge comes change. In celebration of International Women’s Day, Public
Policy Projects (PPP) will be hosting a virtual conference entitled ‘Challenging Health
Inequalities’, on Monday 8th March 2021.
This virtual event will look at gendered health inequalities, with a view to producing
actionable policy insights that can improve healthcare outcomes for all. Gender is a
key determinant of health. Health conditions, health behaviours, service access, and
exposure to health risks all vary considerably by sex and gender.
The Covid-19 pandemic has put some health systems under immense pressure and
stretched others beyond their capacity. Now more than ever, it is essential that we
continue to assess whether the requirements of all patients are truly being
met. Meeting the healthcare needs of all women is highly important and despite
examples of best practice there is still much room for improvement.
Using a solution-oriented approach, this event will explore gendered healthcare
inequalities by looking at three key policy areas: reproductive health, gender and
ageing, and racial disparities in women’s healthcare.
A series of panel discussions with leading experts will unpick the complex relationship
between gender and health, identify solutions for gender responsive change and
propose an agenda for action.
Following the event, PPP will produce a report outlining the emerging policy priorities
of the conference. More specifically, this report will provide policy insights and analysis
on how to best improve women’s access to reproductive healthcare, the importance
of a gendered approach to healthy ageing and how best to implement effective
strategies to eliminate racial inequities in healthcare.
This will be available to read and download on the PPP Policy Library and the World
Healthcare Journal (WHJ). WHJ is a globally facing publication, providing strategic
insight into the development of policy and practice in international healthcare and life
sciences. Available online and in print, WHJ provides opinion, news and intelligence for
governments, healthcare providers and private organisations at a senior level covering
all global markets, topics and sectors.#ChooseToChallenge
Long Term Vision
Public Policy Projects is currently developing a long-term ‘State of the Globe’
policy project on the women’s preventative healthcare agenda, which hopes to
address the international gender inequities in women’s health data, research
and policy. This State of the Globe report will propose gender sensitive indicators
and implementation plans which aim to create a more equitable healthcare
landscape and will be launched at the Commission on the Status of Women
(CSW) in 2022.
Public Policy Projects’ International Women’s Day event will form part of this
series of high-level policy discussions on international women’s health over the
course of 2021-2022. Each session will integrate considerations towards gender
biases in research and data to identify and re-engineer elements of our
international health system in response to women’s needs.
This event combines the CSW 2021 priority theme, ‘women’s full and effective
participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of
violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women
and girls’ and the IWD 2021 priority theme ‘Choose to Challenge’. As such, each
panel session will challenge a pertinent health inequality and identify ways to
mobilise research, data and policy that will empower women and girls to
manage and make effective decisions about their own health.
Chair: Baroness Nicola Blackwood
Event Synopsis
The virtual conference will take place on 8th March 2021 (13.00-15.30).
Within this timeframe, PPP will host three panel events focusing on
key issues in global women’s health, as well as a short virtual
networking interlude for conference attendees and opening and
closing statements from our conference Chair.
Outline
Session 1: Reproductive Healthcare
Session 2: Gender, Aging & Health
Session 3: Racial Disparities in Women’s Healthcare
The emerging insights will feed into PPP’s long-term State of the
Globe report on women’s preventative healthcare. This session will
draw upon expert insight to outline the key areas of concern for
women’s health. This will further shape the research and policy
agenda for the year ahead. A report of this event will be published
after the conference and shared with the PPP network and
attendees.Session 1: Reproductive Healthcare
Current criticism focusses on reproductive health services where providers are too often concerned
only with controlling women’s fertility. This has been reflected in poor communication of
information, a lack of cultural sensitivity and dehumanising treatment which itself has affected
women’s willingness to use the services.
Contraception has become widely available, meeting practical needs based on gender stereotypes,
but this fails to recognise women’s strategic interests. For example, to meet strategic needs, health
services would need to enable women to choose freely between a range of contraceptive methods,
to be educated on the functioning of their bodies and risks and rights related to childbirth and to
research and identify preventative strategies to promote their own wellbeing.
For example, the UK emergency abortion legislation, introduced on 31st March 2020, temporarily
introduced telemedicine to allow women to take both the first and second early medical abortion
pills at home, just like their Scottish and Welsh counterparts. Previously, women were required to
attend a registered clinic to obtain the first abortive pill (Mifepristone) under the supervision of a
doctor, then given the second pill (Misoprostol) to take at home 24-48 hours later. Under the
emergency abortion legislation, a woman will have medical advice over the phone and will receive
the pills in the post in discreet packaging. A recent review from the World Health Organisation
(WHO) found that 94-96 per cent of abortions carried out via telemedicine were complete,
matching completion rates of clinic-based care. This instance exemplifies how the pandemic has
forced a solution to the unjustified obstacles that women face with regards to accessing effective
reproductive healthcare which meets strategic needs.
Women’s access to at home reproductive health treatments should become the new normal,
permanently extending beyond the current social distancing concerns. Not only does this empower
patients to self-manage, but it also increases efficiency, innovation and accessibility. We must
mobilise research and data collection to explore the uses of telemedicine and other telehealth
services as a method of meeting women’s strategic health needs and reducing reproductive health
complications – a key determinant of global women’s health.
Panel Chair: Rt Hon Amber Rudd
Proposed Panel Speaker 1:
Dame Cathy Warwick – Chair, British Pregnancy
Advisory Service
Proposed Panel Speaker 2:
Megan Elliott – VP and COO of Maries Stopes
International
Proposed Panel Speaker 3:
Dr. Natalia Kanem – Executive Director of
UNFPA
Proposed Panel Speaker 4:
Yinka Makinde – Head of Innovation, NHSX
#ChooseToChallengeSession 2: Gender, Aging & Health
Information regarding the ways in which sex influences health in older age is inadequate. Indeed,
surveillance data that includes sex and age-disaggregated data is limited with a lack of research
on sex differences in the social determinants of health.
This is important as women tend to live longer than men and, thus, typically have more interactions
with the healthcare system in old age. While there are numerous longitudinal studies on ageing,
these studies tend to have little or no gender analysis of the different impacts of health conditions
and the social determinants of health on ageing women and men.
An example of this is cardiovascular disease, which is the main killer of older people of both
genders, yet, it is commonly talked about as a male disease with existing research and data
prioritising the male body. As a result of this, many women, especially in low and lower middle-
income countries are undiagnosed or only properly diagnosed in the late stages of the disease
process. This is often due to the difference in clinical presentations. Women with heart disease tend
to present with different symptoms than men and are consequently less likely to seek or to be
provided with medical help. Since women are less likely to be tested for, and diagnosed with heart
disease, the available data and clinical course data continue to be two areas that are under
studied. In addition to the diagnostic limitations, the available treatment options continue to be
tailored to men and, thus, are less suitable for women.
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought into acute focus the urgent need for both governments and
civil society to address the complex demographic shift of population ageing with strategic solutions
and programmes. In order to do this successfully, there is a critical need to adopt a life-cycle
approach to healthy ageing, with particular emphasis on women, that is firmly grounded in gender
equality and human rights.
2021 launches the Decade of Healthy Ageing as well as the Decade of Action to achieve the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the rest of the world, seeks to “build back better” from
the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the moment has clearly arrived to transform the
challenge of population ageing into opportunity. We must translate gender equality and human
rights into practical strategies and approaches that ensure no older woman will ever be left behind.
Policies and practices that support health and active ageing for all will benefit women as well as
men.
Panel Chair: Rt Hon Baroness Nicky Morgan
Panel speaker 1:
Mary Manandhar, Demographic Change and Healthy
Ageing team, WHO
Panel speaker 2:
Dr Wanda Wyporska, Executive Director, The Equality
Trust
Proposed Panel Speaker 3:
Haitham Hamoda, Chairman, British Menopause Society
(TBC)
Panel Speaker 4:
Patrick Vernon, Associate Director for Communities, Centre
for Ageing Better (TBC)
#ChooseToChallengeSession 3: Racial Disparities in Women’s Healthcare
There is a very clear issue of racial inequality in women’s healthcare across the UK. Statistics
show that black women in the UK are five times more likely to die during pregnancy than
white women, while Asian women are twice as likely. Racial disparity is also evident in neonatal
outcomes. Black, Asian and minority ethnic women are at an increased risk of having pre-term
birth, still birth or neonatal death. This concerning pattern has also been observed in breast and
cervical cancer diagnosis. For example, in the UK, black breast cancer patients have a higher
mortality rate than white breast cancer patients.
This issue is not unique to the UK and can be observed across the globe. The disparity in
maternal mortality rates for African American women is documented as one of the greatest
public health inequities in the United States. Studies have shown that health outcomes for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are damaged by institutional racism within
Australian hospitals. Moreover, a report published by the WHO on women’s health and well-
being in Europe documents how gender inequality intersects with ethnicity to undermine the
ability of women to access health systems and receive equal treatment.
The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the racial disparities in healthcare, with data
published by the Office for National Statistics in early May showing that black people in
England and Wales were approximately four times more likely than white people to die from
Covid-19. This trend continues around the world, with patients from ethnic minority
backgrounds disproportionately affected by Covid-19. The NHS has recognised a
disproportionate mortality rate amongst its black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) frontline
workers and patients who have contracted Covid-19 and have called for better representation
in decision making.
Where there has been more considered attention to racial inequalities in health and healthcare,
it has been argued that policy and practice approaches have lacked consistency and frequently
served to stereotype and stigmatise minority ethnic communities. Identifying and
implementing effective strategies to eliminate racial inequities in health status and care should
be made an international priority.
There is also a clear need for a more diverse and expansive collection of ethnicity data in the
healthcare setting. Indeed, accurate data on ethnicity is essential for informing policy makers,
and public health professionals about the occurence, prevalence and outcomes of specific
conditions in population subgroups. This is evident when presented by the emerging evidence
that some ethnic groups are associated with an increased incidence of certain cancers along
with the disparities in access to services.
Panel Chair: Kemi Badenoch MP (TBC)
Panel Speaker 1:
Dr. Christine Ekechi, Co-Chair of Race Equality Taskforce,
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG)
Panel Speaker 2:
Tracey Bignall, Senior Policy and Practice Officer, Race
Equality Foundation
Panel Speaker 3:
Dr Hina Shahid, Head of Muslim Doctors Association
Panel Speaker 4:
Nadia Bukhari, UCL Global Pharmacy Ambassador and
Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
#ChooseToChallengeTimetable
13.00-13.05: Introduction
13.05-13.15: Chair’s Welcome
13.15-14.05: Reproductive Healthcare
14.05-14.55: Gender, Aging & Health
14.55-15.45: Racial Disparities in Women’s Healthcare
15.45-16.00: Closing Call to Action
Projected Audience
- Public Health England
- NHS
- Department of Health and Social Care
- Senior Executives of health institutions
- Charities
- Students/Academics
- Clinical staff
- International health organisations
#ChooseToChallenge
#ChooseToChallenge#ChooseToChallenge Public Policy Projects 28 Queen Street, London EC4R 1BB E: taome.jennings@publicpolicyprojects.com T:0745425522
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