Women’s health strategy.
The Department of Health and Social Care released a Women’s Health Strategy for England in August 2022.
The strategy included a non-recurrent funding offer for all Integrated Care Boards across the country to set up a Women’s Health Hub model.
The Department of Health and Social Care has a clear ambition that within the next 10 years their Women’s Health Strategy for England will have:
- boosted health outcomes for all women and girls
- radically improved the way in which the health and care system engages and listens to all women and girls
They will achieve this by:
- Adopting a life course approach means identifying key opportunities for minimising risk factors and enhancing protective factors through evidence-based interventions at key life stages
- focusing on women’s health policy and services throughout their lives
- embedding hybrid and wrap-around services as best practice
- boosting the representation of women’s voices and experiences in policy-making, and at all levels of the health and care system
The implementation of the Women’s Health Strategy has been aligned to the NHS Devon Joint Forward Plan (JFP) and as part of this, NHS Devon has established an Improving Women’s Health Network. The network includes representatives from primary care, secondary care, NHS Devon, public health, the Local Medical Committee (LMC) and providers of sexual health services.
In collaboration with the Women’s Health Network, NHS Devon drafted a business case in September 2023 to secure the funding and held focus groups with clinicians, women, and other people in Devon. The two initial key priority areas for Devon were agreed.
- Access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) for contraceptive and non-contraceptive reasons (menopause and heavy menstrual bleeding)
- Developing and implementing services for a menopause pathway
In the focus groups, individuals shared their experiences and provided their views on the draft proposals and priorities. The findings from these focus groups are being used to inform the design of future services.
NHS Devon has appointed a Programme Manager for the Women’s Health team to oversee the workstreams responsible for delivering the strategy and ensuring key stakeholders are involved at each stage of the programme.
Historically, long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) and access to menopause services have been limited due to a lack of opportunities available for professionals to access specialist training.
Working in partnership with the local sexual and reproductive health provider, there is now increased capacity for non-contraceptive LARC provision and we are working with local training providers to increase the number of trained fitters.
We have issued guidance to general practice on how they can best access LARC. We will be trialling a referral pathway which will allow women at practices with no trained LARC fitters to access this service at practices who have availability.
NHS Devon is commissioning a pilot with a local provider and a group of specialist GPs who have undertaken menopause training to provide a clinical support service to all GPs across Devon. The aim is to have this service in place by Autumn 2024. This approach will enable more GPs across Devon to support a greater number of patients with their menopause care in a local GP practice.
This pilot will provide the opportunity to gather information and insight to inform the development of a service specification, which will confirm the core services to be included in the next phase of the Women’s Health Hub development.
As part of the Women’s Health Strategy development, NHS Devon will work closely with Healthwatch and the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector to better meet the needs of women in Devon.
NHS Devon is committed to ensuring that the needs of women in Devon are met, and that the recommendations of the Women’s Health Strategy are implemented appropriately for our population.
