The renewed Women's Health Strategy for England - a catalyst for change?

What is the context?

The Renewed Strategy will work to apply the 10 Year Health Plan for England, launched by the UK government in July 2025. The Renewed Strategy is ambitious - emphasising that "fundamental" reform is required to change women's health provision and patient experience. The government sees this happening through three shifts, with patient empowerment at the centre:

1.  The community shift - focusing on giving patients convenience and control;
2. The digital shift - re-evaluating and enhancing the use of technology to provide patients with the same choice they now have in other sectors; and
3. The prevention shift - empowering individuals to take control over their health and make healthy choices.

These themes are very much central to the UK government's strategy for healthcare provision - as referenced in the government's Life Sciences Sector Plan.

What has been promised?

The Renewed Strategy is focused around four commitments:

Creating an approach to research and development that works for and empowers women'

This commitment aims to enhance women’s representation in clinical research and accelerate innovation in women’s health technologies.

Key actions:

• From now on, all National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)-funded research must consider sex-based differences.
• Aim to make it easier for women to participate in clinical trials by integrating the Be Part of Research service in the NHS App - with the future goal of automatically matching patients based on their health data and interests. In particular, there is a data and understanding gap due to historic exclusion of women from clinical trials. There is still some difficulty in getting the data we need - many clinical trial protocols are still excluding large sections of women in participator criteria, and those that do include women can struggle to find participants. Actions supporting an increase in clinical trial involvement and clinical trials will therefore be welcome in the sector.
• Launch a FemTech Healthcare Challenge with £1.5 million funding to support innovations addressing unmet women’s health needs.
• Within a year, launch a new accelerator for female founders with innovations focused on women's health issues.
• Introduce a Genomics Population Health Service to integrate genomic testing and AI analytics for disease prevention and risk management.

Making women’s voices and choices central in healthcare

The strategy recognises that women’s voices have historically been ignored in healthcare, leading to poor outcomes and experiences. It aims to prioritise patient voice, choice, and empowerment.

Key actions:

• Establish a Women’s Voices Partnership made up of organisations representing women to ensure women’s perspectives inform national and regional healthcare planning.
• Implement Patient-Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) and Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs), for core women's health pathways, starting with gynaecological services.
• Launch My Choices on the NHS App, enabling women to compare healthcare providers based on patient experience data.

Transforming NHS performance in services that matter most to women

The strategy focuses on improving access, quality, and safety in women-specific healthcare services, including maternity, gynaecology, and mental health. It also looks to tackle disparities in health outcomes for marginalised groups, including ethnic minorities, deprived communities, and homeless women.

Key actions:

• Reduce gynaecology waiting times by shifting care into community and neighbourhood settings.
• Introduce single points of access for gynaecology referrals and redesign clinical pathways for conditions like menopause.
• Expand genomic testing for conditions like breast and ovarian cancer and roll out targeted community diagnostic centres.
• Set an explicit target to close the Black and Asian maternal mortality gap, informed by the Amos Investigation.
• Invest £50 million to transform support for victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation - including through a national expansion of the Child House model (a child-centred, multi-agency service for victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation).

Supporting all women to lead healthy, prosperous lives

This area of focus seeks to address the social determinants of health and promote prevention to reduce health inequalities and improve life expectancy for women.

Key actions:

• Target to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040 in line with the UK government's previous commitment, supported through actions like rolling out HPV vaccinations in community pharmacies and home testing kits for cervical screening.
• Launch an obesity moonshot and promote physical activity for women and girls, including grassroots sports initiatives.
• Improve and expand on existing voluntary guidelines for alcohol labelling and services to support giving up smoking - recognising that smoking is the biggest cause of cancer and smoking during reproductive age has additional risks to fertility, miscarriage and child health.

Comment

I recently attended FemHealth Integrates at City Labs 1.0. It is clear from conversations at FemHealth Integrates and other events I have attended that there is significant passion and energy being directed to improving women's health provisions in the UK, and there are some great new technologies to support this - however, the conversation has also turned to the fact that top level support and systemic change is needed, with appropriate funding. The Renewed Strategy recognises that fundamental change across a variety of areas is needed - and the actions look to target the root of the issues, rather than treating the symptoms - for example, by looking to better utilise genomic testing and completely redesigning healthcare pathways with the patient experience in mind. This offers some reassurance that the UK government has thought carefully about what steps are needed and is committed to making bold moves, rather than looking for quick fixes.

The first Women's Health Strategy was published in 2022. That strategy focused on priority areas that were thematically similar to those in the Renewed Strategy - but there has been frustration voiced at both individual and organisation level that the patient experience for women has not improved. The Renewed Strategy has promised fundamental reform and is very much action-orientated, with 117 actions to support implementation - including dedicated funding for those undertaking research in connection with unmet needs. This is encouraging, but time will tell whether the aspirational objectives can be translated into meaningful changes.

---

If you have any thoughts about the renewed Women's Health Strategy, or if you are a female founder looking to build connections in the life sciences sector, please contact Emily Dyer in our Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences team.