Report Offers Blueprint to Close Women’s Health Gaps

The McKinsey Health Institute published a 2025 report, Blueprint to Close the Women’s Health Gap: How to Improve Lives and Economies for All,” which has developed a blueprint to close women’s health gaps globally.

The report’s authors state that this blueprint is important because women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health, as compared to men. Closing this health gap could result in 75 million disability-adjusted life years (DALY) annually as well as $1 trillion in annual global GDP. At the individual level, closing this gap could potentially add seven healthy days per year to each woman’s life. 

The report identified nine conditions that are responsible for a third of the health gap for women. These include several conditions that affect older women, including:

• Menopause and perimenopause are estimated to effect more than 450 million women worldwide. Menopause is linked to potential estimated gains of 2.4 million annual DALYs and $120 billion in annual GDP.

• Ischemic heart disease, which is the leading cause of death for women internationally.  Addressing this condition could result in estimated gains of 9.1 million annual DALYs and $43 billion in annual GDP in the women’s health gap.

• Cervical cancer, while being almost entirely preventable with vaccination, contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Dealing with this type of cancer could lead to potential estimated gains of 2.4 million annual DALYS as well as $10 billion in annual GDP.

• Breast cancer, which is the most common cancer for women globally. This could lead to an estimated gain of 1.2 million annual DALYS and $8.7 billion in annual GDP.

• Migraines, which affect 21% of women globally. This effort could lead to estimated gains of 2.7 million annual DALYs and $80 billion in annual GDP in the women’s health gap.

Other health conditions that are listed—including endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), maternal hypertensive disorders, and post-partum hemorrhages—affect younger women.

The report notes that the first step to measure and track progress is being taken through the Women’s Health Impact Tracking (WHIT) platform. This tool, created by the Global Alliance for Women’s Health, is designed to measure the impact of health conditions that contribute to disability, mortality, and economic effects and will provide country-level indicators of data availability, treatment effectiveness and quality, and appropriateness of care delivery.

The report recommends:

• Collecting women’s health data in order to clarify the true burden of disease, particularly for women-specific conditions such as menopause.

• Allocating funding to study women’s health issues. 

• Caring for women through creating best-practice clinical care guidelines that can deliver gender-appropriate and evidence-based healthcare through systems that can address health-related social needs.

• Including all women in order to better acknowledge and address differences in health outcomes while promoting global health equity.

• Investing in women through providing additional funding for research, clinical education and training, care deliver, and the development of innovative interventions.

In a time when political leaders are committed to collapsing different paradigms—whether health, cultural or educational—it’s important to keep reminding policymakers that there is a difference between women’s and men’s health, and that it makes complete sense financially, productivity and culturally to identify ways to support and protect women’s health. We encourage ISW readers to continue to learn about the health issues that affect you personally, support organizations that support and do research around some of these areas, and advocate for women’s health with their local, state, and national policymakers.