Digital tools can help improve women's health and promote gender equality, WHO report shows – World Health Organization (WHO)
The European Health Report 2021 »
Regional Committee for Europe »
A brand new WHO/Europe report reveals that digital well being applied sciences can enhance girls’s well being and promote fairness. The advantages are primarily related to enhancing entry to health-care providers, enhancing maternal well being, offering important well being info, and empowering girls to have extra autonomy.
“Our findings underscore the significance of not solely increasing entry to digital applied sciences but additionally investing in digital well being literacy and engagement amongst girls. The autonomy gained by digital know-how allows girls to handle private well being issues on their very own phrases, entry important info, and foster social connections. This empowerment then extends to all areas of life past well being, equipping girls to make essential selections and choices,” stated Dr Natasha Azzopardi Muscat, WHO/Europe’s Director of Nation Insurance policies and Well being Techniques and a co-author of the report.
The report, entitled “The position of digital well being applied sciences in girls’s well being, empowerment, and gender equality”, discovered that digital well being instruments are significantly helpful in areas associated to gynaecology, obstetrics, psychiatry, vitamin, and bodily exercise. These instruments might help observe signs and drugs consumption in real-time, enhancing self-management. As well as, cell well being apps and telemedicine providers may help in managing anxiousness and despair.
Notably, digital applied sciences might be useful at managing pregnancies. For instance, a digital service in Norway was confirmed to be efficient at offering details about pharmacological interventions appropriate throughout being pregnant and breastfeeding. By providing emotional help throughout and after being pregnant, digital options may function an essential confidence increase.
The report additionally highlights the constructive affect of digital well being instruments related to being pregnant termination. Utilization of digital providers in home-based medical termination of being pregnant might provide a way of privateness, permitting girls to endure a delicate medical intervention in a discrete and cozy atmosphere. This privateness facet could be significantly essential in areas or communities with stigma or social obstacles surrounding abortion.
The WHO/Europe overview found that ladies can acquire extra management over their well being by using digital applied sciences. By facilitating quick access to info, help, and health-care providers in a protected and personal method, digital options might help girls enhance their autonomy and decision-making regarding their well being and well-being.
The empowerment skilled by digital applied sciences is an ongoing course of affected by elements equivalent to digital literacy, accessibility, and socioeconomic circumstances. An earlier WHO/Europe examine discovered that ladies, particularly from ethnic minority backgrounds, are much less more likely to have entry to digital know-how, the talents to make use of it, or motivation to have interaction with digital platforms. Regardless of representing half of the inhabitants, girls make up a rising share of those that are offline.
Though research spotlight the potential of digital instruments to enhance girls’s well being and well-being, challenges persist for health-care suppliers and policy-makers in deploying and scaling up these options. Girls typically encounter obstacles, equivalent to restricted entry to applied sciences, cultural and socioeconomic elements, and caregiving duties. These elements exacerbate the gender digital divide and hinder the advance of ladies’s well being and empowerment.
“Preserving girls’s basic proper to well being care and equitable entry to applied sciences is essential in at present’s digital period. This includes addressing socioeconomic, academic, and humanitarian obstacles. A complete method is required to sort out the gender-based digital divide, together with help from governments, initiatives by the non-public sector, in addition to private {and professional} help to women and girls,” stated Dr David Novillo Ortiz, WHO/Europe’s Regional Adviser for Knowledge and Digital Well being and a co-author of the report.
Equitable, patient-centred approaches are on the centre of the “Regional digital well being motion plan for the WHO European Area”. WHO/Europe encourages its Member States to champion good practices, strengthen well being fairness and gender equality, and develop options to watch and consider digital well being insurance policies and interventions.
Associated
The role of digital health technologies in women’s health, empowerment and gender equality: Project report
Regional digital health action plan for the WHO European Region 2023–2030
Data and digital health
Digital health
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