Putting women at the heart

Although women in the UK live longer than men, they spend more of their lives in poor health and disability.  NHS England’s Women’s Health Strategy launched in 2022 aims to improve health outcomes for women and girls over the next 10 years.

It takes a life course approach, focused on understanding the changing health and care needs of women and girls across their lives, from adolescents and young adults to later life.

The strategy sets our a six-point long-term plan for transformational change:

• Ensuring women’s voices are heard
• Improving access to services
• Addressing disparities in outcomes amongst women
• Better information and education
• Greater understanding of how women’s health affects their experience in the workplace
• Supporting more research, improving the evidence base and spearheading the drive for better data

Our priorities

Women’s Health Hubs will provide accessible and holistic women’s health services across Humber and North Yorkshire. Primary Care Networks will deliver the Hubs, ensuring that services are available close to where women live.

The development of the hubs uses funding of £595k awarded to the 42 ICBs in England.  Funding will be used to build skills and resilience within Primary Care Networks to deliver high quality and consistent women’s health services.

Our focus

The initial focus of the Hub will be on:

• Contraception and menstrual health– specifically improving access to LARCs (Long Acting Reversable Contraception) such as coils and implants, and management of menstrual disorders
• Menopause – care, treatment, education and awareness

These priorities followed engagements with our active stakeholder network of over 100 people involved in women’s health across Humber and North Yorkshire.