Why a private investor is putting billions into women’s health care

By HPN Staff

The Gates Foundation has promised $2.5 billion in new research and development funding over the next five years, “focused exclusively on women’s health."

The money will support “the advancement of more than 40 innovations in five critical, chronically underfunded areas,” the foundation said, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. The money is also meant to catalyze additional investment from governments, philanthropists and the private sector, the group said.

“Investing in women’s health has a lasting impact across generations," Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and chair of the Gates Foundation, said in the announcement. "It leads to healthier families, stronger economies and a more just world. Yet women’s health continues to be ignored, underfunded and sidelined. Too many women still die from preventable causes or live in poor health. That must change.”

Why it matters

In its announcement, the Gates Foundation pointed to a 2021 analysis led by McKinsey & Company that reported just 1% of healthcare research funding is invested in female-specific conditions other than oncology.

A recent report also shows that while women live longer than men, they suffer from poorer health and more disabilities.

The foundation said that every $1 invested in women’s health yields $3 in economic growth, and that closing the gender health gap could boost the global economy by $1 trillion a year by 2040.

The new investment will focus on five areas:

• Obstetric care and maternal immunization
• Maternal health and nutrition
• Gynecological and menstrual health
• Contraceptive innovation
• Improving the diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

The bigger picture

The announcement represents the Gates Foundation’s largest-ever investment in women’s health. That’s been a priority area for the group since its inception, STAT health care news reported.

Gates and his now ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, helped start an institute of population and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University, named for Bill Gates’ father. Melinda Gates has also committed a sizable portion of her own fortune to women’s health.

The new funding comes as the U.S. government is cutting medical research funding, STAT noted, as well as reducing data monitoring efforts and international aid through the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In its lengthy rundown on the new grant, STAT said the Gates Foundation provided a list of example projects that may benefit from the new $2.5 billion commitment, including:

• A V-shaped plastic bag used during childbirth to collect lost blood. Markings on the bag tell health care providers when a woman has lost a dangerous amount of blood.
• A compact ultrasound device that uses artificial intelligence, so the operator needs less expertise to operate it.
• New medicines, including one that targets a key protein involved in triggering preeclampsia, which causes high blood pressure during pregnancy and kills some 46,000 mothers a year. 

Additional details

The funding announcement is part of a wind-down at the Gates Foundation, which aims to liquidate itself over the next 20 years.

The foundation said this work supports its long-term goals: “helping to end preventable deaths of moms and babies; ensuring the next generation grows up without having to suffer from deadly infectious diseases; and lifting millions of people out of poverty, putting them on a path to prosperity.”