Over 40 signatories, including notable companies like GE Healthcare, Salesforce, Microsoft, UCB and Roche, have joined an open letter calling for a much-needed improvement in gender equity in global healthcare. This letter, launched by Kearney at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, highlights the urgent need for industry-wide collaboration to address the gender disparities in healthcare. By addressing the women’s health gap, the global economy could see a significant boost of $1 trillion annually by 2040, according to the World Economic Forum.
The letter emphasizes the long-standing history of inadequate awareness, data, infrastructure, and funding, as well as societal and institutional biases that contribute to worse health outcomes for women worldwide. Statistics reveal that women wait four times longer than men to receive a diagnosis for the same disease, are more likely to have a heart condition misdiagnosed, and are at a higher risk of adverse reactions to medical drugs.
In addition to calling out these disparities, the open letter also outlines six specific strategies to address and end gender disparity in healthcare. These strategies include increasing advocacy and awareness around women’s health, expanding education curriculums to adequately cover women’s health topics, increasing the volume of clinical and policy research trials on women’s health, building women-centric integrated care pathways, ensuring gender-specific data sets are collected and used across the healthcare ecosystem, and boosting funding for academic research and consumer health solutions around women’s health.
The letter aims to bring together representatives from the healthcare industry, education, government, the medical profession, and financial investors to shape a more equitable future for women’s health. It highlights the need for collaboration and a community effort to close the gender health gap and provides a strong call to action for all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem.
