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[w]Health Index
Average maturity, highest to lowest. Browse sectors and click on rows for key findings.
Average maturity, highest to lowest. Browse sectors for key findings.
The Index makes clear that the next phase of progress requires a shift from awareness to accountability. Advancing women’s health cannot rely on isolated initiatives or goodwill alone. It demands that sex- and gender-specific considerations are embedded into core decision-making across the value chain, from R&D and clinical trial design to care pathways, reimbursement, data systems, and capital allocation. Organizations that have moved further along this path show stronger governance, clearer ownership, and greater integration of women’s health into strategy and performance management.
Sector-specific insights highlight both opportunity and responsibility. Consumer health companies lead in maturity, driven by data, design, and direct engagement with women, but must now translate scale into system impact. Pharma and MedTech have made progress in policy and education, yet remain constrained by limited inclusion in research, validation, and care design. Providers and payors play a critical role in translating innovation into equitable access, but too often struggle to align benefits, coverage, and delivery with women’s health needs. Investors are emerging as catalysts for change, but gender-lens capital remains underutilized despite strong fundamentals and growing interest.
Across all sectors, three priorities are essential. First, embed sex and gender into core operations so that equity is designed into innovation, not retrofitted. Second, strengthen data and accountability by linking sex-disaggregated insights to measurable KPIs, leadership incentives, and transparent reporting. Third, align access, investment, and incentives to ensure that innovation reaches women across life stages and geographies.
The [w]Health Index provides a practical framework to support this transition. By establishing a shared baseline, benchmarking progress across sectors, and identifying concrete actions, it enables organizations to move beyond intent toward coordinated, measurable change. The question facing leaders is no longer whether women’s health should be a priority, but how decisively they are prepared to act. Those that lead in the next 12 months will help redefine what effective, inclusive, and future-ready healthcare looks like.
The [w]Health Healthcare and Life Sciences Index is written in collaboration with United Nations Population Fund and HBA Think Tank.