The renewed Women’s Health Strategy comes with big promises: adding a decade to healthy life expectancy in poorer areas and aiming to clamp down on ‘medical misogyny’. It’s important that political attention is focused on women’s health, as it is undeniable that change is needed. The solutions, however, stretch far beyond the NHS.
Our health is shaped by the world around us – from good-quality homes to stable jobs, the money in our pockets and neighbourhoods with green space and clean air. These are known as “the building blocks of health” because they influence the opportunities we have to be healthy. For example, we can only eat healthy food if we can afford it, access it, cook it. This, in turn, means reliable transport, affordable energy bills and homes with safe, functioning kitchens. Not everyone in our country has these options. Evidence shows that these building blocks have far more influence over health than the NHS, genetics or personal behaviours. That’s why any strategy that ignores these factors will fail in its attempt to deliver longer, healthier lives.
In the government’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy, housing, cold homes and fuel poverty are not addressed as determinants of women’s health – despite recent Health Equals data showing that women are more likely than men to live in homes with issues like damp, cold and mould, and suffer with health conditions as a result of them. Income and social security support are also notable by their absence.
It’s clear that women are losing healthy years of life long before they reach any kind of care, and that women in the UK’s poorest areas are missing out the most. Sadly, this is a trend that exists across the country. Recent ONS data on healthy life expectancy by deprivation told two alarming stories. There is a 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the UK’s richest and poorest communities. And those in the UK’s poorest areas are seeing worse life expectancy now than they were before the pandemic.
These gaps haven’t appeared overnight. They’re the result of years of widening inequalities due to things like financial insecurity, insecure or physically demanding work and poor‑quality housing that fall disproportionately on some groups of society and quietly wear down health.
And that’s why, when the government is presented with a chance to tackle these wider determinants of health in a renewed strategy, it’s disappointing that it is so narrowly focused on treatment.
The Women’s Health Strategy rightly acknowledges that women have been let down by the health and care system, and this inequality needs to be taken seriously. Whilst it’s a great step, healthcare reform alone cannot deliver the wider ambition to close the health gap. Yes, services can help women manage illness once it is diagnosed, but they cannot undo the damage caused by years of inequality.
In their election race, Labour made a pledge as part of their health mission: to halve the healthy life expectancy gap.
To achieve that, all the evidence points to the need for a plan that spans government and brings health into every decision – be it on housing, transport, town planning, economics – the health impacts should always be at the forefront of policymaker’s minds.
The government wants to ‘Get Britain Working’ but if Charlie Mayfield’s review into unemployment in the UK has taught us anything, it’s that Labour’s growth agenda hinges on the UK public being in good health. The Women’s Health Strategy is hugely important, but is an example of the government failing to see the bigger picture.
Focusing solely on the NHS and care services to tackle health inequalities uses too narrow a lens. The ask to Wes Streeting is simple: zoom out.
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