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.
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
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 sight of any specific effects on women in a mass of aggregated data.
4. Design clinical trials with women in mind
The report urges a shift toward more inclusive trial strategies, including tailored recruitment, community-based approaches and education plans for both participants and investigators.
5. Share clearer information on sex-specific differences
The report calls for clinical guidelines, drug labelling and patient information to be updated to reflect sex-specific differences in safety, efficacy and dosing. These updates should be based on sex-disaggregated trial data and form a standard part of regulatory approval.
Paula Bellostas Muguerza, Global Lead of Kearney’s Healthcare and Life Sciences practice, said: “For too many women, healthcare still means misdiagnoses, delayed treatment and hitting dead ends. I’ve been there, waiting months for answers, being passed between specialists and feeling invisible in the system before a doctor finally looked at me as a woman, not just as a patient. Only then did I start to get answers. These aren’t isolated experiences, they reflect systems that were never built with women in mind.
“This report sets out five policy areas that can begin to change that, from adapting how we fund research to rethinking how we design trials and define evidence. We know this kind of change is possible. We’ve seen it in rare diseases and paediatrics, where targeted incentives have transformed outcomes. Now, we need to bring that same ambition to women’s health.”
Shyam Bishen, Head of the Centre for Health and Healthcare at the World Economic Forum, said: “It is increasingly recognised that medical care must be personalised for women, addressing the specific health issues they face. This begins with inclusive research practices. Failing to study women adequately affects everyone. The policy recommendations we are advocating are central to enabling more breakthrough treatments and better prevention strategies, which will positively impact lives and are essential to global development.”
Sanjana Bhardwaj, Deputy Director of Global Policy and Advocacy at the Gates Foundation, said: “When women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health, the problem isn’t just clinical, it’s systemic. Transforming women’s health research isn’t optional; it’s critical to unlocking smarter science, stronger economies and fairer futures. Now is the moment for us to turn that possibility into policy and policy into progress.”
