Building on efforts to advance women’s health over the past five decades, PATH is launching a new Women’s Health Initiative next year, with a two-part mandate:
- Advancing research and development to better understand how women and girls are affected by diseases and health challenges.
- Facilitating innovative solutions, approaches, tools, and systems specifically designed to address the health needs of women and girls.
The health and well-being of women and girls are central to health equity and to PATH’s mission.
Current trends around women’s health are mixed. Global awareness and advocacy for gender-responsive health care have increased, and we’re seeing significant improvements in maternal health and access to contraception globally; however, a substantial women’s health gap remains, with women spending more time in poor health because of conditions that affect them uniquely, differently, or disproportionately.
Women’s health is defined as conditions or diseases that affect women and girls in all their diversity uniquely, differently, or disproportionately.
According to recent reports from McKinsey and the Innovation Equity Forum:
- Women spend 25 percent more time in poor health than men, an average of 9 years over a lifetime.
- 58 percent of the gender health gap stems from the lack of effective interventions and data specific to women, and 34 percent comes from the lack of appropriate care delivery.
- Every $1 invested in women's health unlocks $3 in economic growth.
- Addressing the women’s health gap would boost the global economy by $1 trillion annually—a 1.7 percent increase in per capita GDP.
PATH is committed to closing the women’s health gap
Developing and applying locally contextualized end-to-end services and products for every stage of a woman’s life is critical to closing the women’s health gap and ultimately improving hundreds of millions of lives and livelihoods.
Since PATH was founded in 1977, our staff have worked to improve the lives of women and girls through health systems capacity strengthening and the development of strong and inclusive partnerships. Today, women’s health is a core facet of PATH’s gender strategy, which strives to advance gender integration across all PATH projects, workplace policies, and business practices.
PATH’s approach to women’s health combines community-centered innovation with rigorous research and end-to-end product development, commercialization, introduction, and scale-up to deliver health services and products created by and for women and girls—improving women’s health and well-being across all life stages.
PATH seeks to improve women’s health in numerous health, technical, and disease areas across all life stages. Abbreviations: HIV, human immunodeficiency virus; HPV, human papillomavirus; NCD, noncommunicable disease; STI, sexually transmitted infection.
Examples of PATH’s impact on women’s health include:
- Community-centered innovation. Since 2016, PATH has backed the Kakamega County Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Civil Society Organizations Alliance in advocating with policymakers to advance the health of women and children in Kakamega County, Kenya. The Alliance works to amplify the voices of local advocates, ensuring important lived experiences and perspectives are heard by critical decision-makers and resulting in a more supportive health policy landscape for women and children.
- Research and development. The Single-Dose HPV Vaccine Evaluation Consortium, coordinated by PATH since 2018, gathers and evaluates data from clinical trials, observational studies, and modeling analyses regarding the value of a single-dose human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination schedule to protect against cervical cancer. These data have been used to support the World Health Organization’s endorsement of the single-dose schedule for substantially reducing the incidence of HPV-attributable cervical precancer and cancer for girls and young women between 9 and 20 years old.
- End-to-end product development. PATH has long championed the development and commercialization of subcutaneous DMPA (DMPA-SC), a lower-dose self-injectable contraceptive that protects against pregnancy for three months. DMPA-SC is small, lightweight, and easy to use, providing women with a convenient way to access contraception at home. Since 2014, DMPA-SC has been introduced in more than 50 countries, with nearly 1 million self-injection visits documented in 2023 alone.
The case for closing the women’s health gap is clear, but significant action and advocacy are needed to achieve this goal. We hope you’ll work alongside the PATH Women’s Health Initiative to elevate women’s health as a global, regional, and local priority. Collectively, we can drive increased investment in women’s health research and gender-responsive systems and solutions, improving the health and well-being of countless women and girls worldwide.
