Transform Health is a global coalition of more than 200 organisations advocating for and supporting the enabling environment for the digital transformation of health systems to deliver universal health coverage (UHC). As digital transformation accelerates, it presents both opportunities and risks for gender equity in health. Millions of women continue to face significant barriers when seeking essential healthcare, treatment, and support. These gender inequities intersect with income, education, race, and other social determinants of health, leaving the most marginalised women underserved. Digital health offers a huge opportunity to accelerate UHC progress, including to address gender inequalities in health access and outcomes and improve women’s and girls’ health and wellbeing.
To deliver on this goal, Transform Health recognises the importance of being more intentional about the role, and needed action, around gender and digital health. We are excited to launch a new policy brief, ‘Establishing Gender Equitable Foundations for Digital Health Transformation – to Advance Universal Health Coverage’, which makes the case for investment and action to establish the foundations and guardrails for a gender equitable digital health ecosystem, with recommendations to ensure that the digital transformation of health advances progress towards universal health coverage, to the benefit of all.
A sneak peak of the policy brief was unveiled during Digital Health Week 2024 – a global week of action to champion the digital health for UHC agenda – during a session co-hosted by Transform Health, Speak Up Africa, African Women in Digital Health, HealthEnabled and Young Experts: Tech for Health (YET4H). The session focused on identifying how gender equity biases in the design and implementation of digital health tools impact healthcare delivery and outcomes for women and girls. We heard partner and expert perspectives and initiatives on integrating gender into digital health policies and program design.
The persistent gender divide in achieving health equity
More than half the world’s population – 4.5 billion people – lack full access to essential health services, and gender disparities in healthcare, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), remain stark. While digital health offers immense opportunity to advance health outcomes for women and girls, a number of challenges constrain this. These can be broadly categorised as challenges in digital access, challenges associated with digital use, as well as root causes of these issues at population level and systems level.
Access to digital devices and internet connectivity have been identified as key digital determinants of health. And challenges in digital access are driven by the gender digital divide. According to GSMA’s 2024 Mobile Gender Gap Report, 785 million women in LMICs are still offline, and therefore not reaping many of the benefits of digital health transformation. This is compounded by underinvestment in health workers, which further excludes unconnected women and girls from healthcare.
Even when women and girls are connected to the internet, they face challenges of: (i) low levels of digital literacy; (ii) exposure to misinformation and disinformation; (iii) increasing use of the internet to self-diagnosis and self-medicate; (iv) exposure to online gender based violence; (v) exploitation of women’s and girls’ personal health data, (vi) and gender equity gaps and biases in Artificial Intelligence. Digital health transformation and initiatives risk widening health disparities if they do not address these issues.
Achieving a gender-equitable digital health ecosystem: A call to action
World leaders have committed to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. The ethos of universal health coverage is that no one is left behind, especially marginalised communities, including women and girls. With billions of people still without access to essential health services, digital health offers a huge opportunity to help deliver on this goal. However, to ensure this happens, gender must be prioritised.
Transform Health and its partners call on governments, development partners, private sector, civil society, and all stakeholders to rise to the occasion – to ensure that digital health transformation reflects the needs, rights, and perspectives of women, girls, and marginalised groups to deliver health for all in the digital age.
Transform Health’s new policy brief sets out recommendations for building a gender-equitable digital health ecosystem to advance universal health coverage. We call on decision makers and all stakeholders to: 1) mainstream gender in digital health; 2) invest in people; and 3) strengthen regulation and legislation to protect women’s and girls’ rights.
To learn more and get involved, access the full policy brief and join us in ensuring a digital health landscape that is truly inclusive, sustainable, and gender-equitable. We look forward to forging enhanced collaboration with our partners as we continue to advocate for the equitable digital transformation of health systems, and the critical role that gender plays as part of this. Become a coalition partner and get in touch with Ndifanji Namacha (Policy Manager at Transform Health) to learn more about our work on gender and digital health!