Women’s Health and Well-Being

The reproductive years are a critical time for a woman, with lasting implications for her health and well-being. The care she receives during this stage can determine the trajectory of the rest of her life.

One essential aspect of this care is contraception. Contraceptives are safe, effective tools that give women the power to shape their families and their futures. Yet all over the world, they’re increasingly hard to access. From cost and availability to restrictive public policies and stigma, many barriers stand between women and the tools and services they want. We’re continuing and building on our work with partners to dismantle these barriers, especially for underserved women in the U.S.

We’re also supporting efforts to expand access to better maternal health care. Globally, more than 700 women die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. That’s one woman every two minutes. What’s more, where you live—and who you are—often determines whether you get the care you need. In the U.S., Black women are three times more likely than white women to die in pregnancy or childbirth.

We’re working to address those disparities by strengthening and scaling affordable, community-based care models that meet women where they are and deliver the care they deserve.

The most common complication of pregnancy and childbirth for mothers in the U.S. isn’t bleeding or infection—it’s mental health conditions like anxiety or depression. About 1 in 5 mothers experience these issues during or after pregnancy, yet most never receive treatment.

We’re funding efforts in the U.S. and around the world to integrate mental health care into routine visits—including primary and maternal care—so women can get the support they need along with the care they’re already receiving.

Nearly every woman goes through menopause—often during the years she’s also managing work and caregiving responsibilities. For many, it can be debilitating: One-third of women over 40 experience severe symptoms. Despite how common menopause is, so many women still aren’t receiving the care they need. Only one-quarter of women with menopause symptoms ever get treated.

Part of the problem is that menopause is widely overlooked and underfunded. Gaps in research and medical training leave many providers unequipped to recognize or treat menopausal symptoms—and leave many women without the knowledge or tools to manage them.

We’re working alongside partners to help fill those gaps and improve the standard of menopause care so that every woman has access to evidence-based support when she enters this stage of her life.

For too long, research has treated men’s bodies as the default and women’s bodies as an afterthought. When it comes to conditions that primarily affect women, or affect women differently than men, there’s still a lot we don’t know about how to diagnose and treat them. Cardiovascular disease, for example, is the leading cause of death for women globally, yet providers aren’t fully equipped to understand how it shows up differently in women compared to men.

As part of our efforts to accelerate breakthroughs in women’s health and well-being, Pivotal and Wellcome Leap committed a total of $100 million to research conditions impacting women’s lives, including cardiovascular health.

With Wellcome Leap’s proven model, which brings together groups of experts from different sectors and industries to pursue bold goals on ambitious timelines, we expect to see outcomes years—even decades—sooner than we would through other approaches.