PCWHS Press Release | 16th April 2026

20 April 2026 (Last updated: 20 Apr 2026 14:43)

PCWHS welcomes the Women’s Health Strategy, but has concerns about implementation and resources

 

The Primary Care Women’s Health Society (PCWHS) has responded to the Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England, welcoming the ambition to tackle longstanding inequalities in women’s healthcare, while highlighting that the strategy will stand or fall on the capacity, funding, and support available to frontline primary care teams.

A welcome strategy

The PCWHS welcomes the strategy’s ambition to improve care, reduce health inequalities and give women greater voice in their healthcare. We agree with life-course approach, which aligns with our aim to provide education on women’s health needs from adolescence through to healthy ageing.

 

The importance of primary care

We are concerned that primary care is not explicitly named or recognised in the strategy. Most women first access the NHS via primary care, from menstrual health concerns and contraception to cervical screening, preconception advice, menopause care and long-term condition management. It is the foundation upon which the rest of the NHS stands.

Without explicitly naming, resourcing and empowering primary care as the cornerstone of delivery, the strategy’s goals will remain aspirational rather than achievable. Care cannot be shifted into the community without the resources to provide it, which must be recurrent rather than short-term. We are concerned that a shift of work without resources will lead to failure being blamed on NHS staff, who are doing their utmost in very difficult circumstances.

PCWHS calls on the government to rectify this in implementation guidance, ensuring that primary care teams – GPs, nurses, pharmacists, and other allied health professionals – are explicitly recognised, consulted, trained, and funded as central partners in the delivery of this strategy.

 

Women’s health hubs – will the promise be matched by investment?

The PCWHS has long advocated for women’s health hubs as a model for delivering holistic, accessible, community-based care. We welcome continued support for hubs but note with concern that a hub praised in the strategy lacks long-term funding. The sustainability of this model depends on long-term, recurrent funding for both hubs and women’s health care in general practice. Up and down the country, GPs and allied health professionals have seen their qualifications to fit long-acting reversible contraception lapse, because there is no funding for GPs to offer this vital service to their patients. Training more practitioners to have a skill which they cannot provide to their patients will not solve anything.

 

Change must be meaningful, not just words

Inclusion of a menopause question in routine NHS health checks has come with no extra resources. Health checks are often carried out by staff who have no training in the menopause, and no time within the already busy check to carry out a consultation, if they did have the knowledge. The PCWHS calls for cessation of unfunded and meaningless promises such as this, to be replaced with genuinely resourced change.

 

Health inequalities need real action

The strategy rightly shines a light on the stark inequalities facing women but does not see any real action to reduce this. Targeted investment in primary care services in deprived areas, including culturally appropriate outreach, need to be well-planned and resourced.

 

PCWHS calls on government to:

1. Explicitly name primary care as a central partner in the strategy’s implementation guidance, recognising that GPs, practice nurses, pharmacists, and the wider multidisciplinary team are the foundation through which women’s health is delivered every day.
2. Acknowledge that the failures in women’s healthcare have complex causes going back many years and cease the narrative which attributes much of the blame to misogynistic attitudes among NHS staff.
3. Provide sustained, ring-fenced funding for women’s health hubs in primary care, with commissioning frameworks that ensure consistency across all Integrated Care Board areas.
4. Provide sustained, ring-fenced funding for the provision of long-acting reversible contraception in a woman’s usual general practice, ending the muddled joint commissioning between local authority and ICBs which often leads to funding that does not cover the cost of the procedure, meaning that women must wait longer and travel further.
5. Invest in training and education for the entire primary care multidisciplinary team in women’s health.
6. Ensure that implementation is co-designed with primary care professionals, drawing on the expertise of organisations such as PCWHS, whose members deliver women’s healthcare on the frontline every day.

The PCWHS looks forward to engaging with policymakers, commissioners, and healthcare professionals to support delivery.

 

About the Primary Care Women’s Health Society (PCWHS)

The Primary Care Women’s Health Society (PCWHS) is a multidisciplinary professional society supporting healthcare clinicians across primary care to deliver high-quality, evidence-based women’s healthcare. Through education, training, peer support and best-practice resources, PCWHS empowers primary care teams to improve women’s health outcomes across the life course. PCWHS has been a recognised voice in national policy discussions on women’s health, including the development of Women’s Health Hubs.

For media enquiries, please contact:

admin@pccsuk.org

01444 414 264

www.pcwhs.co.uk

The Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England is available at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/renewed-womens-health-strategy-for-england

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