Minister for Women’s Health Nadine Dorries joined a panel at the AllBright Club in Mayfair today to raise awareness of the government’s call for evidence to inform the first-ever government-led Women’s Health Strategy with the aim of improving health and wellbeing outcomes for women across England.
The panel was chaired by Mika Simmons, co-founder of the Ginsburg Women’s Health Board.
At the event, Minister for Women’s Health Nadine Dorries said: “I’ve worked on a number of inquiries relating to women’s health and all of them have concluded the same thing: that women's voices are not listened to.
“This is clear from the data and women’s stories. Black, Asian and minority ethnic women are 4-5 times more likely to suffer harms during childbirth, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and a number of complications.
“Those maternal inequalities are at the heart of what we are doing in our Women’s Health Strategy.”
The other panellists – fertility expert Dr Geeta Nargund, actress Amanda Abbington, and author of ‘Period Power’ Maisie Hill – spoke passionately about the need for women to be listened to in the healthcare space and the fact health concerns are too often dismissed as hysteria or “just a women’s problem”.
They also spoke about the prevalence of heart disease in women, following a study published in the Lancet earlier this week which revealed the cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women, yet remains understudied, under-recognised, underdiagnosed, undertreated in women and is often perceived as a male issue.
Nadine Dorries went on to say: “All women go through menopause, women suffer from infertility and gynaecological problems – but they don’t just suffer from those women-specific issues.
“Women suffer from the same problems as men. Problems like heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. And yet their voices are often missing from the healthcare space.
“What we want to do is turn that around to have women's voices at the heart of policymaking. To do that we need to hear women's voices, we need to know what women's experiences are and the only way we can do that is by talking to women.”
The call for evidence, which has now had over 70,000 responses, encourages women to share their experiences as well as their priorities for a Women’s Health Strategy.
The Minister spoke of the importance of more women coming forward to respond to the Call for Evidence which closes on 13 June.
She also said, “I believe that by directly approaching women we will begin to uncover what the problem is in the healthcare sector that means women are silent participants in healthcare decisions. That is the point of the strategy.”
