Creating Sustainable Models for Women’s Health and Economic Empowerment

March is recognized as Women’s History Month, a month dedicated to highlighting the contributions of women to history and contemporary society. Despite significant efforts to address the health and economic disparities that women face across the globe, women continue to face unique barriers that limit their ability to pursue and March is recognized by the United States as Women’s History Month, a month dedicated to highlighting the contributions of women to history and contemporary society. Despite significant efforts to address the health and economic disparities that women face across the globe, women continue to face unique barriers that limit their ability to pursue and access quality health care and equal opportunities.

The Center for Global Health and Development and CRDF Global hosted government agencies, development organizations, private sector companies, and individual philanthropists to align expertise and resources for women’s health and economic empowerment.

The roundtable is part of the WHEN (Women’s Health and Empowerment Network) hosted by CGHD and marked one of the first forums of WHEN on the Sustained Dialogue on Peaceful Uses, (SDPU) promoting the peaceful use of nuclear technology and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. An advisory board was formalized at the roundtable to analyze case studies in nuclear science and technology that can be scaled in emerging markets to improve economic empowerment for women and provide greater access to health care.

The roundtable was comprised of two sessions. Joanne Manrique, President of the Centre for Global Health and Development stated that the prime purpose of WHEN and this discussion is to move from theory to action, and from action towards scalable solutions for women’s health and empowerment.

Session I highlighted the need to leverage innovation, gender lens investing, and sustainable financing to improve women’s health and economic outcomes. It featured conversations regarding the powerful potential of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in creating sustainable financing models for such initiatives.

Robert Smith, Founder of Conscious Capital, emphasized that when invested strategically, finance can be used as a powerful tool and mechanism to improve the lives of women around the globe. Sari Miller, leading angel and impact investor, spoke to the importance of having women in leadership positions when making decisions of where to invest, commenting that for the last 5 to 7 years, she has focused her investments into women co-led, women led, women founded, women CEO-led startups.

Her Excellency, Dr. Zainab Shinkafi, CEO of the Medicaid Cancer Foundation, spoke about the progress being made in Kebbi State, Nigeria, by explaining the Kebbi State Cancer Fund’s blended financing component, and how the fund words to provide access to care and treatment for women. Her Excellency also commented on the need to streamline financing to scale diagnostic care.

Hafsa Shamsie, Managing Director from Roche Pakistan, echoed Her Excellency’s observation, emphasizing, “Collaboration between public and private sectors is essential in closing the gap in women’s cancer care. Only by combining resources, expertise, and financing can we create an end-to-end care model that ensures every woman receives the comprehensive and compassionate care she deserves.”

Dr. Benjamin Zalisko, Senior Technical Advisor at CRDF Global who is working in delivering the Sustained Dialogue on Peaceful Uses (SDPU), commented that while nuclear medicine has been saving women’s lives for over a century, access to the full benefits of radiotherapy and medical imaging is not universal. Dr. Nigina Muntean, Chief of the Innovation Unit at the United Nations Population Fund, echoed Dr. Zalisko’s observation, commenting that despite Marie Curie having pioneered research in radioactivity and mobile x-rays over 100 years ago, today, we are still not able to deliver sufficient cancer screening and care, including mobile, to women in low-resource settings and especially in remote areas. She concluded this observation by stating that “we need to empower women and provide more opportunities for women to leverage the power of science and technology”.

It was not long before panellists looked to solutions by sharing their experiences, successes, and lessons learned. Valerie Sinden, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Access to Care at Siemens Healthineers, provided thinking on a solution to achieve end-to-end cancer care in low resource settings, while empowering women at the same time.

The powerful potential of public-private partnerships creating sustainable financing models to deliver these initiatives was cited by Elizabeth Murray, Executive Director of Global Patient Solutions at Gilead Sciences. She highlighted the importance of private sector investments as de-risking parameters for other funding entities to invest in manufacturing locally. Michael Anderson, CEO of MedAccess, emphasized the company’s dedication to leveraging their blended financing model to improve women’s health and cancer care, stating, “We live in a golden age of medical science, and yet 2 billion people don’t have access to the essential medicines that they require – this gap is probably getting bigger not smaller. We look forward to working with members of this session as we move forward in closing these stark gaps in healthcare access.”

Panelists started sharing case studies of impactful innovative models they are working to empower women in science, technology, health delivery and health access. Philanthropists and investors in the room expressed immediate interest in these case studies, which moved the discussion towards session II.

Session II featured initiation of an advisory board that will focus on leveraging powerful case studies as catalytic financial mechanisms to support in deployment and scaling of solutions. One case study will focus on the innovative financial mechanism that works to provide insurance coverage for women requiring health care in Nigeria, pioneered, and discussed by Her Excellency, Dr. Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu. A further case study will focus on Roche Pakistan’s end-to-end cancer care model pioneered by Hafsa Shamsie, Managing Director of Roche Pakistan. The case study examples will also feature models for women’s empowerment in nuclear science and technology.

Dr. Ted Trimble, Senior Advisor for Global HPV and Cervical Cancer Control at the US National Cancer Institute, provided expert guidance on the importance of maintaining metrics and evaluation throughout the case study development and deployment stages.

Dr. Nafiisah Chotun from Africa CDC shared a key example of an existing case study from Ethiopia where women have been empowered through the Health Extension Programme while also serving as the link between health centres and the community and emphasized the need to document similar powerful case studies in Africa that can be scaled up across the continent.

Dr. Zalisko, who will be working under the SDPU with CGHD to document, deploy and scale these case studies, commented “We are excited to feature new voices and opportunities through the SDPU to improve access to nuclear medicine, to advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.” CGHD, in partnership with the SDPU and US government agencies including US NCI, will continue these series of roundtable discussions to deploy and scale these case studies for women’s health and empowerment through innovative scientific and innovation models.