Spain triples funding for women's health to tackle gender gap in medical research

The government programme will direct new funding towards research into chronic pain, hormonal and cardiovascular conditions affecting women, including endometriosis, where diagnosis can take up to a decade

Some welcome news for millions of women across Spain who have spent years suffering in silence, women whose pain has too often been dismissed as 'all in their head', or who have faced diagnoses that take close to a decade. The extra funding announced by the Spanish Government is, for many, a long-overdue recognition of that reality.

But alongside the investment itself, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also addressed long-standing gaps in women's medical research and, at points, appeared genuinely taken aback by some of the figures he was reading out, particularly those around diagnosis delays for conditions such as endometriosis.

For many women, that kind of acknowledgement at government level is likely to resonate, especially for those who have spent years struggling to get answers or feeling like they weren't being taken seriously.

The new programme, which will triple funding for research and development in women's health to €18 million a year, is designed to begin addressing long-standing inequalities in how medical science understands, diagnoses and treats conditions that predominantly affect women.

The announcement was made during the launch of a new programme titled 'We Are. We Count: Ending discrimination against women in health research'. Sánchez said it will address a long-standing imbalance in biomedical research, where women's health conditions have too often been under-researched, under-diagnosed and under-treated.

He said the funding will help “boost research, diagnosis and treatment in areas that affect the lives of thousands of women in our country, and which have not received the attention they deserve.”
He also pointed out that this inequality runs right through the whole scientific process, from the questions that get asked in research, to the treatments that eventually make their way into doctors' surgeries and hospitals.

Conditions that will be prioritised

The programme will focus on improving knowledge, diagnosis and treatment in a range of conditions that disproportionately affect women, including:

-Chronic pain
-Autoimmune diseases
-Thyroid disorders
-Cardiovascular disease
-Mental health conditions
-Menopause and hormonal health issues
-Other long-understood gaps in women's healthcare

Sánchez specifically highlighted endometriosis, noting that it can affect around one in seven women and can take up to a decade to diagnose, saying, “If a disease affected one in seven men, causing chronic pain, difficulties working and fertility problems, would we accept a decade-long delay in diagnosis? The answer is obvious: of course not. So it is time we also say 'no' with the same clarity when we are talking about conditions that affect millions of women.”

Three main pillars of the programme

The Government's plan is built around three main areas.

First, a new 'mission' on women's health will be launched through the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), encouraging companies and research centres to develop projects focused specifically on women’s health.

Second, new funding will be channelled through the Carlos III Health Institute to strengthen research in this area and improve collaboration between research teams across Spain.

Finally, support will be increased for researchers working in women’s health, including dedicated pre-doctoral contracts through the State Research Agency to help bring more specialists into the field.

He went on to say that equality cannot be achieved while science continues to deliver better outcomes for some lives than others, adding that the plan is for Spain to continue to modernise its research and healthcare systems.

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Images: La Moncloa