Renovated Women’s Health Strategy comes with big promises: adding a decade to healthy life expectancy in poorer areas and aiming to combat ‘medical misogyny’. It is important that political attention is focused on women’s health, as it is undeniable that change is needed. The solutions, however, extend far beyond the NHS.
Our health is shaped by the world around us – from good quality homes to sustainable jobs, money in our pockets and our neighborhoods with green space and clean air. These are known as the “building blocks of health” because they affect our chances of being 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 and functional kitchens. Not everyone in our country has these opportunities. Evidence shows that these building blocks have far more influence on health than the NHS, genetics or personal behaviour. This is why any strategy that ignores these factors will fail in its attempt to provide longer and 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 problems such as damp, cold and mold and to suffer health conditions as a result. Income and social security support are also distinguished by their absence.
It is clear that women are losing healthy years of life long before they get any care, and that women in the poorest areas of the UK are losing the most. Sadly, this is a trend that exists across the country. The latest ONS data on healthy life expectancy from deprivation showed two alarming stories. There is one The 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest communities in Great Britain. And those in the poorest areas of the UK are seeing worse life expectancy now than they were before the pandemic.
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These gaps did not appear overnight. They are the result of years of growing inequalities due to things like financial insecurity, insecure or physically demanding work and poor quality housing that fall disproportionately on some groups in society and silently harm health.
And that is why, when the government is presented with a chance to tackle these wider determinants of health in a renewed strategy, it is disappointing that it is so narrowly focused on treatment.
The Women’s Health Strategy rightly recognizes that women have been let down by the health and care system, and this inequality needs to be taken seriously. While it’s a big step, health care reform alone cannot deliver on the broader ambition of closing the health gap. Yes, services can help women manage the disease once it’s diagnosed, but they can’t undo the damage caused by years of inequality.
In its election campaign, Labor made a promise as part of its health mission: to halve the healthy life expectancy gap.
To achieve this, all the evidence points to the need for a plan that involves government and brings health into every decision – be it housing, transport, urban planning, the economy – health impacts must always be at the forefront of policy makers’ minds.
The government wants to ‘put Britain to work’, but if Charlie Mayfield’s review of UK unemployment has taught us anything, it’s that Labour’s growth agenda depends on the good health of the UK public. The Women’s Health Strategy is hugely important, but it is an example of the government’s failure to see the bigger picture.
Focusing only on the NHS and care services to tackle health inequalities uses too narrow a lens. The question for Wes Streeting is simple: zoom in.
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