International Women’s Day 2021

Challenging Health Inequalities

8th March 2021 (13.00-16.30)

Public Policy Projects 28 Queen Street, EC4R 1BB E: [email protected] T:0745425522

#ChooseToChallenge

Contents

1. Wh at 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.

EVENTS

International 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.

th Celebrated annually on 8 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 statement s 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 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

Panel Speaker 1: Clare Murphy – Chief Executive, British Pregnancy Advisory Service

Panel Speaker 2:

Dr. Sue Mann – Medical Expert in Reproductive Health, Public Health

Panel Speaker 3: TBC

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Session 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

Panel Speaker 4: Dr. Alison Giles, Associate Director for Healthy Ageing, Centre for Ageing Better and Public Health England

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Session 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: (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 Ambassador and Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society

#ChooseToChallenge Timetable

13.00- 13.05: Chair’s Welcome

13.05-13.15: Keynote Presentation

13.15-14. 20: Gender, Ageing & Health

14.20-1 5.15: Reproductive Health

15.15-16.20 : Racial Disparities in Women’s Healthcare

16.20-16. 30: 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: [email protected] T:0745425522