7. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Women’s Health

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:37 pm on 5 July 2022.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 5:37, 5 July 2022

Excellent. Thanks, Russell. First of all, I thank the committee for taking this issue seriously. I guess I've got a little appeal to you, as a committee—I know you're independent and you can do what you want, but it would be really useful if you could do this quite quickly so that you can influence the plan. What I'm really keen to do with this plan is to get everybody to contribute and feel like they can make a difference here, which is why I've been really keen right from the beginning to involve women's groups in things just to make sure that people feel empowered to feed in.

So, if you could do that as a committee—I'm sure you've started on that work already—it would be really useful. We've got quite a tight timetable, but I'm really keen to get this done so it can influence next year's integrated medium-term plan proposals, so that would be very good.

I'm sure you are aware of the finance Minister's statement today, and she was saying that she's

'delighted to share with the Senedd the cross-Government work that is under way to explore the potential for a focused package of work in gender research linked to health.' 

This is really important, I think, to get the data sorted out so we can know exactly what's going on. That's part of the problem; it was a problem that was identified by Caroline Criado Perez in Invisible Women, her book, and I'm sure that the feminists amongst us have analysed that quite carefully and have realised that, you know, we live in a world designed by men for men. We need to rebalance that. It's very difficult to understand how you're going to change it unless you get the data right from the beginning, and I think that's an important thing and something that we're very keen to address.

In terms of women in leadership and governance positions in NHS Wales, I've got to tell you that I've been very impressed by the number of women in leadership and governance positions in the NHS in Wales. I think I'm right in saying that many of the chairs are women, many of the chief executives are women, and certainly, many of the people in middle management are women, so it's not just that the NHS is made up of a very high percentage of women, but they are actually getting to those top positions as well.

In terms of communication, then, the important thing about this programme is that it's got to be owned by the NHS, which is why I really want them to develop it. They've got to own it so that they deliver it. I don't want it to be entirely imposed on them. I'm telling them what the quality of what they need to meet is, but they've got to decide how they're going to go about that. On communication, I do think we need to be very careful around communication—we've got to get this right. I'm really keen to push a lot more on digital. On the other hand, lots of the people in our hospitals, for example, are dementia patients. So, you're quite right, but even if you—. You've just got to be sensitive to different people, and hopefully that is something that will be addressed.

Prevention is an area where we're very keen to make sure that we do some work and I guess just looking at the programmes that we've got through a gender lens, I think, is really important, so things like 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' will be important. And then when it comes to care closer to home, what I'd like to see, and I'll certainly be pushing them to work towards this, is menopause or menstrual expertise in the primary care clusters, so that we get one in each cluster. I've got to make sure that they buy into that, but that's what I'd like to see—that kind of expertise developed and delivered on a local level.