Menopause care on the world's stage
This year the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland brought together close to 3,000 cross-sector global leaders from business, medicine, government, academia, and media from over 130 countries to address complex global challenges and shape agendas.
As an independent non-governmental international organization and think-tank, the WEF is committed to improving the state of the world through public-private cooperation. A pivotal part of World Economic Forum mission is to highlight and advocate for health equity.
Participants at the WEF play a pivotal role in advocating for and implementing strategies promoting health equity. By embracing innovative solutions and harnessing diverse voices, the most vulnerable and marginalized global communities are uplifted and strengthened against future health-related challenges.
The UICDR’s Dr. Pauline Maki participated in this year’s WEF conference to highlight the economic impact of women's health. Specifically, Dr. Maki powerfully advocated for improved menopause care as a critical factor for economic opportunity.
Dr. Maki was invited to participate in the WEF’s Global Alliance on Women’s Health, a multi-stakeholder platform dedicated to identifying and advancing the global conversation on women's health.
As a table lead for the session, “Blueprint to Close the Women’s Health Gap – How to Improve Lives and Economies for All”, Dr. Maki facilitated discussions focusing on menopause and closing the women's health gap. The women’s health gap refers to the fact that women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health compared to men. WEF, in partnership with the McKinsey Health Institute, calculated that menopause is one of the main conditions contributing to this gap, representing potential estimated gains of $120 billion in annual gross domestic product (GDP). With this heightened awareness of the economic burden of menopause, menopause has been a focus of events at Davos for the past two years.
“Advancing menopause care is critical—not just for women’s health but also for the economy,” Dr. Maki emphasized. “Menopause is among the top nine conditions impacting women’s health and quality of life.”
“Additionally, I spoke on a panel, “Unlocking Human Potential in the Age of AI: Women and the Brain” where we discussed how AI can be leveraged to close the women’s brain health gap and promote brain capital. My particular role was to speak on where AI has the biggest opportunity to improve women’s brain health and brain skills,” said Dr. Maki.
“AI tools are being implemented to improve the quality and efficiency of clinical care, advance research, and track progress. Start-ups across the globe are providing care to women using AI and natural language processing to provide personalized menopause education and treatment recommendations, as well as to counter misinformation about treatments that don’t work or that are harmful. AI is used in the research setting to identify symptom patterns from large data sets of wearable devices and menstrual cycle trackers.”
The goal of these sessions was to promote stakeholder engagement, including over 50 executive leaders from around the world, from leaders at the United Nations to pharmaceutical companies to non-profits.
It’s encouraging to see the collective voices from business, government, and academia are propelling this advocacy work forward at an impressive pace.
While ignored in the past policies, the United Nations Population Fund now identifies menopause care as a human right.
The momentum for addressing the menopause women’s health gap continues to build at an almost meteoric pace, which is critical to improve health outcomes for the 450 million perimenopausal and postmenopausal women worldwide.