The Economic Impact of Erasing Women’s Health Data: A Crisis We Can’t Afford

I had a completely different plan for how this blog post would go. 

Just as I was about to sit down and write about the impact of erasing women from health data, I read a LinkedIn post where someone shared a headline and link that the layoffs have begun at HHS…the same headline that was on every news station regardless of where one sits on the political continuum. There wasn’t even a political commentary in the post.

Beyond the shock of the headline, what struck me the most was the coldness in some of the responses. “I’ve been laid off, so what?” “That’s business.” “It’s happened in tech many times.” “It’s about time.” “What did they do, anyway?”

The post was simply informative – the layoffs have begun. There were empathetic comments as well, so I guess some people felt that had to be countered?

It occurred to me how callously people were erasing human beings who just lost their job. It doesn’t matter if one agrees or disagrees with the premise of the layoffs. Have we forgotten humanity?

I have been laid off. And I’ve had to lay people off. I have worked along-side amazing HR and Chief People Officers, and they always had one simple reminder in those difficult times: Laying someone off should always feel hard, even when it is the necessary thing to do. It should feel hard because you are changing someone’s life, and you don’t know how it impacts them.

When you have to look at someone or be looked at across a table in a layoff, you are talking to a mother, or father, or child who cares for a parent, someone nearing but not at retirement, or a young person who may not have next month’s rent through no fault of their own.

When we callously erase people and their work identity as unimportant, we should question ourselves. Not them.

The same goes for women’s healthcare. What happens when we erase women's health data from our  economy?

When we ignore gender-based health, don’t include women, ignore data equity, and erase women’s health data, we don’t just lose numbers - we lose lives, economic opportunities, and the ability to solve systemic healthcare challenges.

Women’s health has long been underfunded and under-researched, representing less than 5% of overall healthcare investment despite women making 80% of healthcare decisions and accounting for 50% of the population. Yet, as research on women’s health is unfunded, and women’s data sets are disappearing from public websites, it begs the question: To what end?

Regardless of what color we wear or what letter we associate with, the suppression, underutilization, or outright removal of women’s health data from medical research, policy decisions, and funding priorities is not just about healthcare outcomes.

As much as I believe it should be first about outcomes, it is actually about the economy. Erasing women’s research and women’s health data have massive economic costs.

Lost Innovation and Investment

According to Fortune Business, the global women’s health market is projected to reach $41 billion by 2027. Yet, the lack of quality data makes it harder for investors to identify opportunities and for founders to build viable, scalable solutions to meet this market demand. The many solutions dedicated to solving long understudied and underfunded diseases affecting women, or affecting women differently, are solutions that can drive economic growth. And women consumers in this market are seeking authentic products addressing genuine problems created by women with lived experience and based on relevant data.

Increased Healthcare Costs

The US spends $12,000 per person on maternal healthcare, more than twice that of every other high-income country. The reason is simple: when women lack comprehensive data, experience misdiagnoses, delays in care, and treatment gaps, costs go up. It is most notable for maternal health, but women are also under-diagnosed for ovarian cancer, heart disease, fibroids, endometriosis, autoimmune disorders, pain, and many other conditions. The result is that women are treated at more serious stages, which leads to higher (and avoidable) healthcare costs.

Workforce Impact

Women make up nearly 40% of the workforce, but these delayed, under-treated or missed diagnoses lead to lost productivity, absenteeism, and decreased economic participation. In too many cases, delayed care takes women out of the workforce permanently. Notably, women are not just key players in the paid workforce. Failure to identify disease does not discriminate between a woman who works at a company or one who is a full-time parent and caregiver to support her family. In fact, the costs are often higher for women doing unpaid labor because there is no system in place to take over their work when they are removed due to illness or death.

Personal and Economic Stakes

Women are not niche consumers of healthcare. A 2024 GoodRx study showed that women spend $39 billion out of pocket on healthcare, and female specific conditions drove $1.5 billion in spending (an area that is lacking female specific products). As well, women’s health outcomes affect families, communities, and entire economies. Yet, the lack of inclusive data continues to reinforce bias in clinical trials, insurance coverage, diagnosis, medical training, and treatment protocols. Erasing these data widens the gap which increases the number of missed diagnoses, amplifying negative outcomes.

In the LinkedIn post about layoffs, every callous remark was rebuffed - not for their differing opinion on the politics of the action, but for their failure to recognize the value of a human being.

Valuing women’s health is about valuing a human being. A human that will get cancer at later stages or will suffer years of disability for treatable conditions like endometriosis, or die from preventable heart attacks, or live with diseases that won’t have treatments or cures. Everyone has a woman in their life, and many, unfortunately, have watched a woman in their life suffer unnecessarily.

But if that is not a sufficient enough reason to value women’s health and data equity, then value the economics.

The lack of data presents a challenge, but also an opportunity.

• Without robust datasets, it’s harder to develop AI-driven diagnostics, digital health solutions, or scalable care models. Women’s health data puts more data into the model – doubles it, really.

• By investing in platforms that aggregate, analyze, and protect women’s health data, we can create a new economy of care – one that is inclusive, evidence-based, and cost-effective.

• Building products for female specific conditions addresses a consumer gap, with evidence to support the desire to spend on these conditions.

• Funding women’s health research strengthens the paid and unpaid workforce by reducing the average 9 years of lost productivity due to illness.

It will continue to be my objective, and that of many of my colleagues, to close the data gap in women’s health through data-driven insights, research-based strategies, and innovative health technology solutions. It is my strong belief that we are all better off when we improve women’s health.

As investors, founders, and organizations committed to changing the game in women’s health we can capitalize on this trillion-dollar market and improve outcomes.

This is a spotlight moment and clear economic opportunity to erase this gap, not women’s health data.

What are you going to do to prioritize women’s health?