10
Cross-Sector Partnership
Cross-sector partnerships are vital to women’s health R&D. Current efforts are fragmented and under-resourced due to awareness, bias, and data gaps. A unifying partnership would convene stakeholders, elevate women’s health within broader R&D landscapes, and develop, implement, and share equitable models, incentives, and accountability to build a robust, well-funded ecosystem.
Partnerships—among funders, researchers, clinicians, payors, the private sector, communities, community organizations, and others—are a critical component in many of the opportunities and solution strategies outlined in this report.
New or strengthened partnerships are needed to activate these solutions, building off the momentum of efforts to raise awareness, close data and funding gaps, and innovate to meet specific women’s health needs.
There is a key gap—and opportunity—within the partnership landscape for a partnership model that spans the full scope of women’s health R&D.
Women’s health R&D is under-resourced and under-prioritized across the broader health ecosystem due to lack of awareness, bias, and data gaps. Existing partnerships play a critical role in addressing these gaps for specific issues, but these efforts are often fragmented, siloed by condition or discipline. Building from the work done to date by the Innovation Equity Forum, a cross-sector partnership could unify these fragmented efforts toward a robust, well-funded, and equitable women’s health R&D ecosystem.
A partnership that spans the full scope of women’s health R&D could unify fragmented approaches to addressing these barriers:
- Convene stakeholders across women’s health R&D to advance the opportunities laid out in this report
- Position women’s health R&D as a priority within existing R&D partnerships and the broader health ecosystem
- Define, implement, and share models, incentives, and accountability approaches for equitable R&D partnerships
Overview Cross-Sector Partnership
10.1 Partnerships
The 2023 Innovation Equity Forum (IEF) was unique in its scope, bringing together stakeholders across geographic regions to tackle the holistic topic of women’s health R&D, including issues of both sex and gender; conditions that only impact women, disproportionately impact women, and affect women differently; and health and well-being across the life course. This 2023 Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map is a tremendous milestone that we hope spurs innovation, investment, and partnerships to bring critical, accessible, life-improving, and life-saving solutions to women and girls. Yet this report alone will not achieve the intended level of impact without a dedicated partnership and forum to advance it.
The IEF showcased the potential of a coordinated effort across stakeholders, sectors, and geographic regions. We call for this momentum to be accelerated by an inclusive and equitable multi-stakeholder partnership covering the full scope of women’s health R&D under the auspices of a credible neutral convener.
Activating this partnership is a critical first step in activating the opportunities laid out in this report. This effort requires a broad coalition of stakeholders — working together under a co-created and collaborative plan of action — to elevate women’s health R&D across their respective networks. A secretariat with dedicated execution capacity should support the partnership, and it should be resourced to provide participation support to civil society organizations, LMIC stakeholders, and other under-resourced entities. To achieve the ambition outlined in this report, the partnership and effort must be funded proportionally to the aspiration for impact and scaled accordingly.
Progress Assessment
Progress made against Opportunities, from the 2024 Progress Report
Status Moderate Progress
0 % Achievement
Solution Strategies
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Convene stakeholders across the full scope of women’s health R&D to advance the opportunities laid out in this report. The primary role of the partnership will be to continue the work started through the IEF. This partnership should unite diverse stakeholders from different disciplines, sectors, issues, and geographic regions to work together under a shared goal and strategy to drive measurable progress and strengthen the overall ecosystem for women’s health R&D. Key activities include:
- Identify and convene stakeholders with global representation, both within and beyond the R&D space.
- Establish an equitable governance structure for shared and balanced decision-making across stakeholder groups.
- Establish a collaboration and coordination model for co-creating strategic priorities and implementing activities to advance the opportunities outlined in this report.
- Define goals and measurable indicators to monitor progress on this Opportunity Map, including how innovations are translated into healthcare in low-resource settings and the strength of the ecosystem for women’s health R&D.
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Position women’s health R&D as a priority within existing R&D partnerships and the broader health ecosystem. There is growing awareness of the importance of ensuring health research and development is sex- and gender-intentional. However, prioritization of women’s health is often notably absent from large-scale global health R&D efforts, such as epidemic preparedness, vaccine research, or non-communicable disease forums. A central role of the partnership will be to activate a coordinated network of champions to center women’s health R&D across the health ecosystem. Key activities include:
- Define a collective advocacy, resource mobilization, and communication approach, including compelling narratives tailored to engage different stakeholders.
- Compile a compelling evidence base for advocacy demonstrating the financial, health, and societal return on investment for women’s health R&D.
- Develop advocacy and activism tactics to motivate enabling policies, pledges, commitments, and scorecards to assess how well women’s health R&D is embedded in other R&D partnerships.
- Identify and equip champions to advocate at global, regional, national, and product-and disease-specific forums for legislative action, political mandates, and accountability mechanisms for prioritizing women’s health R&D.
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Define, implement, and share models, incentives, and accountability approaches for equitable R&D partnerships. Inequity within health R&D is a pervasive issue that transcends women’s health. This partnership cannot on its own solve the broader issues of equity, but it can work to ensure that women’s health R&D partnerships are intentional models for equitable partnerships. With its deliberate focus on ensuring broad geographic representation and participation by civil society organizations, the IEF demonstrated an initial starting point for this objective. Key activities include:
- Identify and develop approaches for equitable R&D partnerships, addressing key drivers of inequity and building on positive examples and lessons learned.
- Implement equitable R&D principles and practices in this partnership’s governance and actions, ensuring active leadership by patient advocate and women’s rights groups and equity across settings with different resource levels.
- Develop metrics and mechanisms to hold partners accountable to expectations for equitable partnerships.
