Ladies in England are being urged to assist form reproductive well being coverage by sharing their experiences of a variety of points.
The federal government’s launch of the survey comes greater than a yr after ministers first promised to hunt girls’s views on points together with intervals, contraception, fertility, being pregnant and the menopause, as a part of its girls’s well being technique.
Findings from the train, to be launched on Thursday, shall be used to raised perceive girls’s reproductive well being experiences over time and inform authorities well being coverage, in accordance with the Division of Well being and Social Care.
“We have to make healthcare work for ladies and women – and for it to suit round their lives,” mentioned the ladies’s well being ambassador, Prof Dame Lesley Regan. “There’s no level bolstering companies if they will’t be accessed, or the assist accessible doesn’t work for them and meet their wants.
“That’s why we’re asking girls and women to share their expertise, whether or not it’s about intervals, menopause or endometriosis. We want your voice to form a brand new system of healthcare that offers girls what they want.”
The survey is open to all girls in England aged between 16 and 55 and can run for six weeks from Thursday. It’s being run by the London Faculty of Hygiene & Tropical Drugs (LSHTM).
Dr Rebecca French, an affiliate professor of sexual and reproductive well being analysis at LSHTM, mentioned: “For most ladies, it may be almost 40 years from their first interval to menopause. All through this time, girls ought to be capable of make knowledgeable choices about their very own reproductive well being and wellbeing, reminiscent of if and when to get pregnant and the place to entry acceptable assist and remedy.
“Ladies have beforehand described difficulties accessing reproductive well being companies, for instance, to get contraceptive provides, to entry fertility remedy or to acquire an appointment with a gynaecologist. Typically well being companies will not be ‘joined up’, resulting in a number of visits and appointment delays.
“The ladies’s reproductive well being survey offers a chance to raised perceive what assist is required and the way these points can finest be addressed.”
Ministers vowed to sort out a long time of “systemic” and “entrenched” gender well being inequality final summer season with pledges to launch a survey about reproductive well being and introduce obligatory girls’s well being coaching for docs, extra most cancers checks and “one-stop store” hubs throughout the NHS.
Initially due in 2021, then rescheduled for spring 2022, the 10-year girls’s well being technique was printed by the federal government in July final yr.
The minister for ladies’s well being technique, Maria Caulfield, mentioned: “Ladies and women deserve the perfect healthcare at each stage of their lives, however we merely can’t ship that with out listening to their lived experiences and considerations.
“I’d encourage each girl to finish the survey on reproductive well being as quickly as they’re ready and guarantee their voice is heard.”
