Supporting the Women’s Health Plan in 2022

The ALLIANCE continued to work with the Scottish Government’s to deliver the Women’s Health Plan.

In Spring 2022 the ALLIANCE launched a dedicated programme of work to support the delivery of the Women’s Health Plan 2021-2024. This work aims to ensure that women and people who access women’s health services are involved in conversations about their health, and that information related to the priority areas within the Plan are communicated through engaging and empowering channels.

To launch our new programme we hosted two introductory roundtable sessions in May and June 2022 with both organisational and lived experience stakeholders. At these sessions we were able to capture stakeholders’ priorities in this area, and build partnerships with women, and organisations with networks across Scotland. As part of this launch period, we welcomed a panel of women’s health experts to the ALLIANCE annual conference. The session, on ‘why we need the Women’s Health Plan’, brought together DCMO Marion Bain, Chair of the Scottish Women’s Convention, Agnes Tolmie, and NHS Lothian’s Dr Sigi Joseph.

The ALLIANCE’s women’s health programme is committed to supporting women to use their lived experience to input to the policy and service developments outlined in the Women’s Health Plan. To enable this in 2022 we recruited for and convened a Women’s Health Plan Lived Experience Group. The Group met twice in 2022 and consist of diverse lived experience and demographics.

Signposting women to expert information related to their health has been a priority in 2022, as well as establishing spaces where women’s health experiences are normalised and prioritised. This has been particularly true for our work on menopause. We hosted two webinars in 2022 in partnership with the Scottish Government that sought to amplify menopausal experiences and provide information and advice on symptom management and available support. In August we were joined by Professor Kat Riach from the University of Glasgow and Dr Katrin Bjornsson from NHS Ayrshire and Arran to discuss the impact of menopause on women’s experiences within the workplace and good practice workplace policy. Following from this discussion we published a Menopause and the Workplace resource pack, to better equip both staff and employers with information will promote positive culture change in this area. In October  we explored menopause and sexual wellbeing with Dr Claire Macaulay. This session further exemplifies of our work to destigmatise women’s health experiences and allow space for supportive and non-judgemental conversations. We also produced a short informational video with Dr Kay McAllister from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde on the basics of menopause. The attendance and interest in these sessions and outputs have proven the relevancy and need for better conversations and information on menopause across sectors, and the population.

Growing an intersectional evidence base on women’s health experiences is a priority within the Women’s Health Plan, and the ALLIANCE was pleased to support several research initiatives in 2022. We partnered with the Scottish Government to host four focus groups exploring discrimination and its impact on health for women and girls. We then supported in the recruitment of interviewees for the second phase of this research, which will be published in an academic study in 2023. The ALLIANCE was also pleased to be a named partner in University of Glasgow research survey exploring experiences of menstrual health and menopause for the NHS workforce. We will be continuing our work on this project in 2023 with focus group activity.

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