Measuring and tracking components of the gap are important and meaningful first steps in the journey to equitable health and healthcare for women and girls. Measures that drive action and direct resources to areas of impact are critical. The Women’s Health Impact Tracking (WHIT) platform was created to address this need. WHIT was designed to measure the burden of health conditions that contribute to the women’s health gap (in terms of disability, mortality and consequent economic effect) and country-level indicators of data availability, treatment effectiveness and quality and appropriateness of care delivery. It was designed by stakeholders, for stakeholders, as a practical and tactical tool to track progress over time and illuminate areas of opportunity to scale proven interventions to rapidly close the women’s health gap. WHIT allows anyone around the world to view the 2024 baseline, including the most recent data used for this report, with the potential to monitor year-on- year progress and create a previously unavailable level of transparency. It incorporates metrics across the selected conditions developed in the Global Alliance for Women’s Health working groups and incorporates 15 countries that are representative of each income level. WHIT is an initial step. It highlights important data gaps and creates a path to make relevant data available to stakeholders. Prior to the launch of the platform, researchers, policy-makers and business leaders gathered data on women’s health conditions and outcomes from fragmented sources – a process that was inefficient and fails to reveal the big picture. With WHIT, leaders and interested parties can access centralized, tested data. This allows leaders to spend their time and efforts not on collecting data, but on understanding and using it. Additionally, WHIT was built for scale. Over time, it aims to expand to all countries and conditions that contribute to most of the women’s health gap. But data is useful only if used effectively, and no one stakeholder can reverse structural inequalities and inequities. Every life matters – and so does every death. One meaningful goal could be for all countries to standardize data collection for maternal mortality, pregnancy-related complications and additional conditions affecting the maternal health span. Additionally, healthy births could be measured. Pregnancy is the “canary in the coal mine”:171 for an individual woman, complications in pregnancy can illuminate potential long-term health consequences; for a society, how pregnant women are cared for (or not) is indicative of investment and priorities in health and social systems. For example, women with gestational diabetes are more likely to develop diabetes mellitus, type 2, later in life; women with cardiac-related conditions in pregnancy may have vascular changes that persist after delivery and greater risk of ischaemic heart disease. By standardizing the collection of health metrics for pregnant women, healthcare professionals can have broader insights into the health of individual women and of populations in the longer term.3.1 Count women: Measure women’s health and health outcomes globally Better understanding of hormones and the biology of sex-related differences may improve women’s lifespan and health span. Researchers have found links between oestrogen, menopause and brain health. One study found that a decline in oestradiol during the menopause transition was associated with changes in the brain, including cognitive changes, effects on sleep and effects on mood.173 Another analysis of close to 200 women between the ages of 40 and 65 found that menopause tended to affect brain structure, connectivity, energy metabolism and amyloid- beta deposition.174 Research into sex-specific biology across basic science, pathophysiology and clinical trials could include the implications of hormones on medication metabolism and effectiveness – including a more personalized approach to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to drive better health outcomes. For instance, a recent study evaluated oestrogen receptor activity across the brain for pre-, peri- and post-menopausal women. Oestrogen receptor density (a measurement of an organ’s “hunger” for oestrogen) progressively increased in the brain over the menopause transition, and increased oestrogen receptor density in areas of cognition was associated with lower memory scores for women. 3.2 Study women: Understand hormonal health and women’s biology Blueprint to Close the Women’s Health Gap: How to Improve Lives and Economies for All 29

Blueprint to Close the Women%E2%80%99s Health Gap 2025