One of the country’s leading figures in women’s health is coming to Liverpool to find out more about how the city is tackling the gender health gap.
Dame Lesley Regan – the country’s first National Ambassador for Women’s Health – will visit the city on Thursday (4 August) and meet with Liverpool’s Cabinet Member for Social Care and Health, Councillor Frazer Lake and leading public health figures to discover more about the pioneering ‘women’s hubs’ which have been established by the city council in partnership with the NHS.
The hubs, which were announced earlier this month, offer a range of services from long-acting reversible contraceptives, such as coils, contraceptive implants and injections, through to cervical screening, psychosexual services and treatment for menopause and heavy periods.
They are based in GP practices with local surgeries served by the hub referring their patients on if they need support.
During her visit, Dame Lesley will see the work of a hub first-hand when she visits Princes Park Practice in the south of the city.
As part of Dame Lesley’s new role, she wants to tackle deep-rooted issues which prevent women receiving the support they need. It forms part of the government’s wider levelling up ambition, as lack of support, awareness and understanding of health conditions specific to women are harmful not only to the health and happiness of women, but the health of the economy.
Although women in the UK on average live longer than men, women spend a significantly greater proportion of their lives in ill health and disability when compared with men. Not enough focus is placed on women-specific issues like miscarriage or menopause, and women are under-represented when it comes to important clinical trials.
This has meant that not enough is known about conditions that only affect women, or about how conditions that affect both men and women impact them in different ways. There are also disparities in women’s health across the country.
Dame Lesley is a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Imperial College London and Consultant at St. Mary’s Hospital London. She was awarded a DBE for services to women’s health in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List.
For more information on the governments women’s health strategy, visit:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/womens-health-strategy-for-england/womens-health-strategy-for-england