Australia is halfway through the 10-year National Women’s Health Strategy, yet only three of the 20 priority areas have seen meaningful progress.
The government will need to put a stronger focus on women’s ageing, chronic disease and mental health if it intends to meet the goals of the National Women’s Health Strategy 2020-2030, says a new baseline assessment report.
In the meantime, it recommended restructuring Medicare to incentivise long consults; a change that has long been on the wish list of organisations like the RACGP and AMA.
The report, which was released on Monday and put together by consulting firm Deloitte, evaluated the progress in women’s health between 2020 and 2024.
One of the main findings was that while health awareness was growing across key focus, in line with the goals of the strategy, that increased awareness was still missing a specific gender lens.
“Meaningful change will require that a gender lens is applied across all priority areas,” it said.
“This report has identified that, at present, a gender lens is rarely considered in relation to healthy ageing, chronic conditions and preventive health, and mental health.”
Healthy ageing, mental health and chronic conditions and preventative health represent three of the six priority areas for the strategy; the other three are maternal, sexual and reproductive health, health impacts of violence against women and investing in research.
Across the six priority areas were 20 specific priorities, each of which were rated as either “requires stronger focus”, “some progress” and “meaningful progress”.
All told, seven were rated as needing stronger focus, 10 were rated as having had some progress and three were rated as having seen meaningful progress.
However, the report did note that it would take time for increased awareness to translate into action and for action to produce meaningful change.
“… Preventive efforts to improve women’s health are realised over the lifetime rather than at a point of implementation,” the report said.
“Correcting for the systemic under-funding and lack of research into women’s health, as well as ongoing biases in delivery, will be a lengthy process requiring sustained investment.
“Stakeholders cautioned that meaningful changes in outcomes targeted by the Monitoring and Reporting Framework may not be apparent until after the strategy ends in 2030.”
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The three areas which had seen meaningful progress were: reducing the prevalence and impact of endometriosis, building research capacity in women’s health and adopting a multi-faceted approach to support women and girls with eating disorders.
“Where we should celebrate some success is the advocacy of many women’s health groups and organisations like the AMA, who really pushed hard for more MBS and PBS access for some women’s health initiatives,” AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen told The Medical Republic.
“We’ve celebrated the inclusion of more oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy treatments on the PBS, and that’s already made a meaningful difference to patient care – the fact that I’ve got more options to offer to patients has been really welcomed.
“And then from November, the changes to MBS rebates for long-acting contraceptives will also really improve the situation for women.”
In terms of areas to improve, the report pointed to systemic changes to the way GP consults are funded.
“Addressing gender bias will require an increase in the capacity of the health care system to address the complexity of women’s health across all care settings,” it said.
“For instance, Australian general practitioners … are financially incentivised to keep appointments short despite a recent poll finding that 65% of doctors agree that the most pressing change needed for female patients is more time.”
RACGP vice president Dr Ramya Raman told TMR that her female patients frequently brought up appointment lengths as a barrier to care.
“There is a consistent messaging from my patients, as well as from my colleagues, that it actually takes longer to work through some of these concerns in a general practice setting,” she said.
“That’s not a bad thing; it’s actually a really good thing that women feel comfortable to be able to raise that, but often that there are complex medical, psychological or social issues that come up as well.
“We do need to acknowledge that more than 50% of the population who attended general practice are women, and Australian general practitioners at this stage are financially incentivised to keep appointments quite short, and that’s going against the … needs of our patients.”
The report also mentioned a need for GPs to have greater access to social workers and social prescribing tools in order to fend off loneliness in ageing women and ensure targeted prevention for some chronic diseases.
