Commissioning for Women’s Reproductive Health Across the Life Course

This research project will look at how different areas of England are commissioning women’s health to improve care and follow the recommendations of the Women’s Health Strategy.

Background

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In England, women’s health services are provided by different people working in healthcare in different places, including GP surgeries, sexual health clinics, and hospital gynaecology departments. Often these services are not joined up and can be hard to access, with unequal care for different groups of women.   

The Government published a Women’s Health Strategy for England in 2022. It recommended changes to improve women’s health care. This included setting up a new ‘Women’s Health Hubs’ in every area where women can get support and treatment for issues such as period problems, menopause, and contraception.   

‘Commissioning’ is the name of the process the National Health Service (NHS) follows to plan, buy and oversee health services to get the best care and results for patients, including making the changes recommended by the Women’s Health Strategy. Our study will look at how different areas of England are commissioning women’s health to improve care and follow the recommendations of the Women’s Health Strategy.  

While the NHS plans use the term ‘women’, it is important to say that these services are also needed and used by people with other gender identities, such as non-binary people, and they are included in the plans and our study.  

Methods  

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We will interview people involved in commissioning across the NHS and look at documents and data to see:  

• How commissioning varies between different areas, including how women are involved;  
• What is working well, and what the challenges are;  
• How differences in care and health of women are being tackled (e.g. in relation to race, home county, etc).  

Policy Relevance & Dissemination  

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We will work with women, commissioners and people who work in healthcare and will use what we find to make suggestions that can be used to help people responsible for women’s health services to do more of ‘what works’ to improve the health and care of women in England. We will produce reports, academic articles, videos and presentations and share them with people who make decisions about healthcare, people who work in healthcare, and the public.   

Outputs

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21 May 2025
Commissioning of Women’s Health in ICBs in England since the Women’s Health Strategy: Interim Report Executive Summary
Interim Report Executive Summary
Beck Taylor, Judith Stephenson, Elena Proffitt, Ifra Ali, Jenny Hall, Verity Pooke

Summary: The NIHR Policy Research Unit in Reproductive Health is pleased to share early findings from a two-year project investigating the Commissioning of Women’s Health in Integrated care boards (ICBs) in England since the Women’s Health Strategy. This Interim Report Executive Summary, completed in January 2025, reports on emerging findings from the first year of the project, drawing on interviews with Women’s Health Hub leaders and data from NHS England. Emerging messages suggest promising progress in establishing Hubs. Challenges included funding, fragmented commissioning, workforce capacity and waiting list pressures. These early insights are exploratory and should be interpreted with caution as the project continues.

 

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The NIHR Policy Research Unit in Reproductive Health is part of the NIHR and hosted by UCL.