• A joint report by Kearney, the World Economic Forum, and the Gates Foundation highlights the severe underfunding of women’s health research.
  • The Prescription for Change blueprint outlines five key reforms, ranging from funding incentives to inclusive clinical trials and updated drug labeling.

A new report released by global consultancy Kearney and the World Economic Forum's Global Alliance for Women’s Health, with support from the Gates Foundation, is calling for major reforms in women’s health research. 

Despite making up half of the global population, women receive just 7% of healthcare research funding for conditions that affect them exclusively. Alarmingly, only 5% of available medications have been adequately tested and labeled for use during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

The policy blueprint, Prescription for Change, outlines five key changes to address the chronic underfunding and neglect of women in clinical studies

The report outlines a multifaceted strategy to make women's health research more commercially attractive. It suggests introducing tax credits, targeted grants, and matched public–private investments, along with a revised pricing and reimbursement model to encourage innovation.

It further calls for mandatory inclusion of diverse participants in clinical trials, ensuring representation by sex, age, and race to better reflect the actual disease burden. A key element of this is the development of maternal investigation plans, designed to safely incorporate pregnant and breastfeeding women.

To enhance data accuracy, the blueprint emphasizes the need for standardized methods of trial data collection and analysis. This would prevent sex-specific outcomes from being obscured in aggregated results.

Equally critical is the call to reframe how clinical trials are designed, prioritizing strategies that are inclusive and community-based, and ensuring both participants and researchers are properly educated on sex-related variables in health outcomes.

Finally, the report urges that clinical guidelines, drug labeling, and patient information be routinely updated to include sex-specific findings. Incorporating such data into regulatory approval processes, it argues, should become the norm rather than the exception.

“For too many women, healthcare still means misdiagnoses, delayed treatment, and hitting dead ends. I’ve been there—waiting months for answers, being passed between specialists, and feeling invisible in the system before a doctor finally looked at me as a woman, not just as a patient. Only then did I start to get answers,” said Paula Bellostas Muguerza, global lead of Kearney’s Healthcare and Life Sciences practice.

The report notes that improving women’s health could not only enhance quality of life but also boost the global economy by over $1 trillion annually by 2040.

Edited by Harshajit Sarmah